Deborah J.
Cornwall
Managing Director
Deborah J. Cornwall is co-founder and Managing Director of The Corlund Group, where she and her colleagues provide focused top management services in the areas of leadership assessment and development, governance effectiveness, and change management. In her 33 years of experience as an organizational consultant, she has helped Boards of Directors, CEOs, and senior management teams to adapt their leadership practices and organizations to changing marketplace demands and to shareholder growth expectations. In particular, she helps Boards to perform leadership due diligence. This includes ensuring Board agreement on management’s strategic direction, orchestrating sensitive CEO effectiveness and succession decisions, and helping Boards to review their own effectiveness.
Her clients have included such organizations as Alegent Health, American Cancer Society, American Hospital Association, Bayer Diagnostics, Bellcore (now Telcordia Technologies), BlueCross/Blue-Shield of Massachusetts, Campbell Soup Company, Catholic Health Initiatives, Chesapeake, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Cordis Corporation, CUNA Mutual Group, CVS, Delimex, Du Pont, Fortis, Freeman Health, Grace, Idex Corporation, The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, La-Z-Boy, Menasha Corporation, Montell, Nashua Corporation, Orange County Teachers Federal Credit Union, Provena Health, Public Health Institute, Shore Memorial Hospital, South Jersey Industries, The TJX Companies, and The Turner Corporation.
Before creating The Corlund Group, Mrs. Cornwall was a co-founder of Korn/Ferry Organizational Consulting, where she led major client assignments and spearheaded a variety of breakthrough leadership and governance studies that Corlund has continued to perform. These studies have dealt with the role of Boards in assessing, supporting, and evaluating CEOs; lessons from managing major strategic and organizational change; the effectiveness of Board processes for selecting, evaluating, and replacing chief executive officers; and the impact of a deteriorating economy on corporate CEO selection, retention, and succession planning practices (with particular focus on first-time and transformational CEOs).
Mrs. Cornwall has spoken before such professional groups as The Conference Board, the Executive Issues Forum (N.Y.), Leadership Connection (N.Y.), Management Development Forum (N.Y.), The Wharton School (Executive Leadership Conference), and Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce. In 2006, she co-authored a monograph on CEO succession for the Center for Healthcare Governance, a subsidiary of the American Hospital Association. She has been published or quoted in Directors and Boards, The Corporate Board, Directorship, Fortune, The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, Across the Board, Business Horizons, The President, The New England Business Journal, and CFO Magazine. She serves on the Board of the New England Division of the American Cancer Society, where she is active in state and national advocacy and is a member of the National Business Group on Volunteerism. She is listed in Who’s Who in America.
Mrs. Cornwall began her consulting career with Harbridge House, where she rose to the position of S.V.P. and led the practice focused on senior executive development, facilitated strategic planning, organizational assessment, and change. She holds an M.B.A. degree with high honors in organization and management from Boston University’s Graduate School of Business. Previously she earned a B.A. degree in philosophy (with distinction) from Mount Holyoke College, where she was elected Phi Beta Kappa. She is an avid golfer.
- Wilmot J. Gravenslund,
Director
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101 Federal Street, Boston, Massachusetts 02110
617-423-9364 • FAX 617-423-9371 • info@corlundgroup.com