Yvette Best

I have been in human resources for about 35 years across multiple industries on the corporate side, dating back to the mid-90s after I got my MBA. Currently, I am an independent consultant with my own business doing human resources consulting, primarily for non-profit organizations, startups, or small to medium-sized businesses, although I do have one contract with Amtrak. My focus primarily is on pay equity, and my background is really compensation - that's usually what gets my foot in the door in many organizations. I've typically been hired, either on the consulting side or on the corporate side, to come in and develop the salary structures, take a look at pay equity, conduct market analyses, and rewrite job descriptions from a job classification and evaluation standpoint. My doctorate is in organizational leadership, and so I'm considered a change agent in terms of being able to come into an organization, understand the culture, what some of the cultural challenges are, and make transformational changes. On a typical day as an independent consultant, I'm juggling multiple clients and ensuring that from a project management standpoint, each project is successfully moving forward. It's up early, understanding what the day is going to look like, which clients' time frame is at the forefront, and then prioritizing what the deliverables are for a particular project. It could be meetings, online research, conducting market analyses, taking a look at the competitiveness of the structures of the organizations I'm working with, or if it's an independent client I'm doing executive coaching with, making sure they're on target with some of the objectives we've established and meeting their executive leadership goals.