Kimberly Rochat is a Principal and Co-founder of Cobalt Strategies, Inc. She advises clients around human resource issues and is a compensation specialist, assisting organizations in aligning their people, rewards, culture and business strategy. She consults on executive, Board and employee compensation, advising around the design and implementation of base pay systems, cash incentive programs, equity strategies and plans, recognition programs and performance management systems. Her focus has been on the development and implementation of reward strategies and plan designs to support the achievement of business goals.   

Dr. Rochat has worked with small to Fortune 100 companies across industries, including high technology, life sciences, financial services, telecommunications, retail, manufacturing and healthcare. She assists companies with global rewards programs and has on-the-ground experience at international locations. She works with clients involved in mergers and acquisitions, providing assistance around people strategy and HR programs with due diligence, pre-Day One preparations, and post-Day One integration. 

Prior to Cobalt Strategies, Dr. Rochat served as Practice Leader for the Performance Management and Compensation group at Deloitte & Touche, LLP for the Northern California/Hawaii/Pacific Northwest and also co-led the Western Region. Prior to leading the practice at Deloitte, she was with iQuantic, Inc., a compensation consulting firm focused on serving high technology companies. Before that, Dr. Rochat served as a compensation consultant and Western Region broad-based incentive specialist at Watson Wyatt Worldwide. She began her consulting career at THC Associates, a boutique compensation consulting firm specializing in incentives.  

Dr. Rochat has been a frequent speaker on current compensation issues. At the annual World at Work conference, she has spoken on "Taking a New Look at Incentive Strategies" and "Global Rewards Strategies" and also co-presented with compensation leaders from IBM and Cisco Systems on "Going Global with Rewards."  She has spoken to numerous audiences ranging from academic to associations such as NASPP. At Deloitte & Touche, Dr. Rochat was a thought leader in "total rewards" and global rewards strategies, approaches and programs and co-founded and facilitated the monthly Global Equity-HR Forum for large Bay Area high technology companies.  

She earned a Ph.D. and M.A. in Organizational Psychology from the California School of Professional Psychology at Berkeley/Alameda, where her doctoral dissertation focused on the design and effectiveness of employee incentive programs. She also holds a B.A. in Psychology from the University of California at Davis, with minors in Organizational Studies and Rhetoric and Communication.

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