Independent, partner-level counsel on executive and board pay for Chicago-area public, private, family-held, and pre-IPO organizations — plus interim and fractional total rewards leadership on a contract basis.
RB Consulting Services advises Chicago-area public companies, private and family-held businesses, pre-IPO firms, and nonprofits on executive and board compensation — independently, and at partner level on every engagement.
Most of what a Chicago compensation committee needs is not different from what a committee in New York or London needs: a peer group that holds up, an incentive plan that pays for the right things, and disclosure that survives proxy-advisor scrutiny. What differs is who is round the table and how much room they have.
We have sat on the other side of that table. Our team led compensation programs inside large multinational public companies — running committee cycles alongside committee chairs, administering equity across 30+ countries, owning proxy and regulatory disclosure — before advising from the outside. The practical effect is that a recommendation arrives already pressure-tested against what it takes to implement it, not just to present it.
Every engagement is led by seasoned compensation professionals working as partners. There is no leverage model and no junior staff learning on your time — the person who scopes the work is the person who presents to your committee.
That structure suits Chicago-area organizations that need the quality of counsel a large firm provides without the account-management layer that comes with it: growing private companies, smaller public filers where the committee chair does much of the work personally, and pre-IPO companies building a program for the first time.
If you are a nonprofit board or executive director, our Chicago nonprofit executive compensation page covers Form 990 benchmarking and IRS §4958 reasonableness documentation specifically. For the full service range, see what we do and why organizations choose us.
No — we are not a Chicago-headquartered firm, and we would rather say so than imply otherwise. We work with Chicago-area clients remotely and on-site as the engagement requires, including attending compensation committee meetings in person. Executive compensation advisory is a judgment business, not a proximity business; what matters is whether the adviser has run these programs before, and whether they show up personally.
Three things, mainly. Senior people do the work rather than scoping it. There is no cross-sell into benefits brokerage, actuarial, or survey subscriptions, so the advice has no second agenda. And our team has held the in-house seat — building and running these programs, not only recommending them — which tends to show up in whether a recommendation survives implementation.
Yes. That includes peer group review, market assessment, incentive plan design and modeling, agenda and materials preparation with the committee chair, attendance at meetings, and proxy and CD&A support through the annual meeting. Our team has directed these cycles from inside large public companies as well as advising them from outside.
Yes, and it is a distinct practice. Nonprofit executive pay runs on IRS Form 990 comparability data and IRS §4958 reasonableness documentation rather than proxy peer groups and say-on-pay. We keep it on a separate page for that reason.
Whether it is a committee cycle, an incentive redesign, a peer group review, or interim coverage — direct, partner-level engagement from the first conversation.
Tell us what you’re working through and we’ll follow up directly.