Groat and Alpern Awards

Judge William B. Groat Alumni Award

Judge William B. Groat (1899-1986) served as counsel to the New York State Joint Legislative Committee on Industrial and Labor Relations, where he played a pivotal role in founding the ILR School and drafting its charter.

The Groat Alumni Award was established in 1971 in honor of Judge Groat's vision and in tribute to his professional accomplishments, which culminated in appointment as justice of the New York State Supreme Court, Eleventh Judicial District.

Jerome Alpern Award

The Jerome Alpern Award was established in 1997 and named in honor of Jerome Alpern '49, whose contributions of outstanding service and support to the ILR School, its students, and its alumni, combined with his professional accomplishments outside the field of industrial and labor relations, embody the essence and spirit of the Alpern Award.

Past Awardees

See past awardees of both awards

Scott Buchheit, M.S. ’77 and Linda Gadsby ’88 will be honored by the ILR School with its highest awards at the April 24 Groat and Alpern Awards celebration at The Pierre in Manhattan.

Scott Buchheit, M.S. ’77
Judge William B. Groat Alumni Award

Scott has spent his entire professional career working as a neutral in dispute resolution. He began as a mediator in community disputes with the American Arbitration Association, focusing on a land dispute between the Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy and New York state.

He then transitioned to being a mediator in public sector disputes with the New Jersey Public Employment Relations Commission, following which he worked as a field examiner/field attorney with the National Labor Relations Board in Philadelphia.

Scott also served as the first director of the American Arbitration Association’s Task Force on Law and Business Schools, which successfully promoted the then-novel concept of teaching alternative dispute resolution in those schools.

In 1983, Scott became a full-time labor arbitrator. Since then, he has served in thousands of cases in the private and public sector, and on numerous panels ranging from professional sports to the health industry to education.

Scott received the Outstanding Alumni Award from Penn State's Department of Labor Studies and Industrial Relations. While a graduate student at ILR, he wrote his thesis on unionization among graduate students, a topic still of importance. Scott earned his law degree at Temple University, having studied international dispute resolution at Hebrew University School of Law in Jerusalem. He lives with his wife, Pam, in Lumberton, New Jersey.

A founding board member of the Scheinman Institute on Conflict Resolution, Scott established the Scheinman Scholars Graduate Scholarship to support the development of an inclusive next generation of neutrals in conflict resolution. He has also been involved in establishing a new introductory conflict resolution course at ILR for undergraduate students.

Linda Gadsby ’88
Jerome Alpern Alumni Award

Linda Gadsby ’88 is senior vice president, general counsel and chief diversity, equity and inclusion officer at the National Board of Medical Examiners in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

She is responsible for the organization’s legal affairs, advises senior management and the board of directors, is a member of the executive team and is general counsel of the United States Medical Licensing Examination. She leads the Office of the General Counsel and Organizational Affairs division, which includes Legal Services, Disability Services, Volunteer and Governance Services, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, and Community Collaborations and Contributions.

Before joining the National Board of Medical Examiners, Linda spent 22 years as vice president and deputy general counsel at Scholastic Inc., in New York City. Linda has also worked as a labor and employment attorney for AlliedSignal (now Honeywell) and Kaye Scholer LLP (now Arnold & Porter). Linda received her bachelor’s degree from the ILR School and her law degree New York University School of Law.

Giving back to her community, especially in support of initiatives focused on youth, education and women, is extremely important to Linda and she’s a mentor to several youth and young professionals. She serves on the executive committee of the Cornell Board of Trustees and chairs the Student Life Committee, is a member of the ILR Dean’s Advisory Council, Cornell Mosaic (an umbrella diversity organization), is an emerita member of the President’s Council of Cornell Women, which she co-chaired, and is a lifetime member of the Cornell Black Alumni Association, which she chaired.

Linda has also been a long-serving member of the board of NYU’s Law Alumni Association and an advisory board member of the Law Alumni of Color Association. She’s active in several civic organizations, including the North Manhattan Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., the Essex County (N.J.), Chapter of The Links, Inc., the Essex Hudson Chapter of Jack and Jill of America, Inc., and the Metro New York Chapter of The Doll League, Inc.

A resident of South Orange, New Jersey, Linda has been widely recognized for her professional and community achievements. She was honored as a Top 50 Corporate Counsel by Icon in 2024 and 2022, a Top 100 Most Influential African American Leaders in Business by the National Diversity Council in 2020 and a Top 100 Women in Business by the National Women’s Conference in 2022. She was also named one of the Nation’s Best Lawyers of Color in 2019, one of the Most Influential Black Lawyers in 2015 and 2018 by Savoy Magazine, a Distinguished Alumni by New York University School of Law and an outstanding leader in the field of education by the Consulate General of Barbados at New York.