Ann Bares

Ann Bares is the Managing Partner of Altura Consulting Group, LLC. She has over 20 years of experience consulting in the area of employee compensation.

In her consulting practice, Ann has worked with a wide range of client organizations in designing, implementing and reviewing executive, employee and sales compensation plans, from base pay structures to incentive compensation programs. She brings a particular focus to aligning reward plans and practices with the organization’s strategic priorities. She has extensive experience in developing and conducting training and communication programs to support compensation initiatives. Her clients have included public and privately held businesses, both for-profit and not-for-profit organizations, early stage entrepreneurial organizations and larger established companies.

Prior to founding Altura Consulting Group, Ann spent more than a decade consulting with Watson Wyatt Worldwide (now Towers Watson) as well as several years with regional consulting firms (RSM McGladrey, Inc.,and Riley Dettmann & Kelsey. Early in her career she spent time in staff compensation and human resources roles with Northern Telecom, Inc. and Bankers Life & Casualty Company.

Ann has an MBA degree from the J. L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University and a BA degree from the College of St. Catherine. She has served on the Board of Directors for the Twin Cities Compensation Network and the Twin Cities Human Resources Association and is an active member of WorldatWork, where she writes and serves as an article reviewer for association publications including Workspan and the Journal.

Ann has served on the Board of Directors of the American Lung Association of Minnesota, where she was chairperson of the Human Resources Committee, a member of the CEO Performance and Compensation Committee and a member of the Sarbanes Oxley task force. As chairperson of the Merger Steering Committee for Human Resources, Ann has also played a key role in the merger of Lung Associations from Minnesota, Illinois, Iowa and Wisconsin to form the American Lung Association of the Upper Midwest. For this work, she received the Association’s annual “Extra Mile” award.

Ann is a frequent speaker to industry and professional groups, and has authored numerous articles on employee reward topics. She is the author of Compensation Force, one of the top-rated human resource blogs on the Web and also founder and editor of the online Compensation Café. She has been a regular instructor for the University of Minnesota’s College of Continuing Education and has served as adjunct faculty at Concordia University.