Dr. Dionne Pohler is the David and Alexandra Lipsky Professor in Dispute Resolution Professor at Cornell University ILR School in the Department of Global Labor and Work and Associate Director of the Scheinman Institute on Conflict Resolution. She is also currently an associate editor at ILR Review. She previously held faculty and university administrative positions at both the University of Saskatchewan Edwards School of Business and the University of Toronto Centre for Industrial Relations and Human Resources. From 2021-2025 she held the Co-operative Retailing System Chair in Co-operative Governance at the Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy and Canadian Centre for the Study of Co-operatives, where she remains an adjunct faculty and research fellow. 

Her  research spans topics in labour relations, conflict and dispute resolution, co-operative governance and development, rural issues, human resources, and public policy. She edited the Labor and Employment Relations Association annual research volume, Reimagining the Governance of Work and Employment (2020) and co-edited Building Inclusive Communities in Rural Canada (2023, University of Alberta Press) as well as New Frontiers and Trajectories in Labor-Management Relations (2026, Oxford University Press).

Dionne helped develop a co-operative model of economic and social development alongside western Canadian rural settler and indigenous communities as one of the co-investigators on the Co-operative Innovation Project. CIP led to the creation of a non-profit organization, Co-operatives First, dedicated to working with rural communities to address the needs identified by community members. Dionne was a founding board member of Co-operatives First, which has assisted communities and leaders start over 130 new co-operative enterprises.

Dionne holds a PhD in Human Resources and Industrial Relations from the University of Alberta School of Business, a Bachelor of Commerce from Dalhousie University, and a SHRM-SCP. Her research is published in national and international peer-reviewed academic journals including ILR Review, Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, British Journal of Industrial Relations, Journal of Applied Psychology, Personnel Psychology, Canadian Public Policy, and Human Resource Management. She holds four international awards for her research and three university teaching awards. She has received several Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council grants and a major industry grant, and is also a practicing mediator.

Photo credit: David Stobbe