BWWC Q3 Signer Briefing - Be Prepared: A Conversation on Wage Transparency Trends in the Workplace

Pay transparency laws are becoming more prevalent in the United States. They come in many shapes and sizes - salary band requirements and the reporting of pay information to the state by gender, job category and race are just a few of the options being debated and passed by legislatures. They all have the same goal: eliminating systemic bias in the workplace so that marginalized groups like women, especially those of color, can advance in their careers at the same rate as men.

Tiziana Dearing, host of WBUR’s Radio Boston, moderated a conversation between BWWC co-chair Evelyn Murphy and Garry Straker, VP of Compensation Consulting at Salary.com, around the imminent laws and practices that will affect both employers and employees in the near future.

Evelyn Murphy, BWWC Co-Chair

Evelyn is a Ph.D. economist, Founder and President of The WAGE Project, Inc. and author of Getting Even: Why Women Don’t Get Paid Like Men and What To Do About It published by Simon & Schuster in 2005. The WAGE Project, Inc. is a nationwide, grassroots activist organization dedicated to eliminating the gender wage gap. 

Earlier in her career, Evelyn Murphy served as Massachusetts Secretary of Environmental Affairs, and subsequently as Secretary of Economic Affairs, In 1986, she was elected Lt. Governor of Massachusetts and became the first woman in the state’s 200 year history to hold constitutional office. Prior to her election, no woman had ever served as Governor, Lt. Governor, Secretary of State, Attorney General, Treasurer, Auditor or United States Senator.

Gary Straker, VP of Compensation Consulting at Salary.com

Garry has more than 25 years of experience providing total rewards consulting services to a diverse list of clients from a variety of industries, including technology, logistics, retail, higher education, non-profit, healthcare, public sector, and others. Garry’s focus is helping organizations achieve strategic goals by leveraging technology, data, and labor market insights to design sustainable, market-aligned total compensation plans.

His expertise includes developing rewards programs that are appropriately aligned with workplace culture, and business priorities. Services he provides include broad based compensation and executive compensation (non-profit), development of compensation philosophies, pay equity analyses and remediation to support Diversity & Inclusion, market benchmarking, pay structure design, job evaluation and classification, review of pay processes and policies, compliance, creation of merit and bonus pay programs, and effective communication of compensation programs.

Tiziana Dearing, host of Radio Boston on WBUR.

Tiziana has been a commentator and contributor to WBUR for more than a decade, and has contributed to a number of other regional and national news outlets.

Prior to joining the Radio Boston team, Tiziana was a professor at Boston College in the School of Social Work, where she taught social innovation and leadership. A longtime anti-poverty advocate, Tiziana also ran Boston Rising, a startup antipoverty fund to end generational poverty in Boston, and was the first woman president of Catholic Charities for the Archdiocese of Boston.