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ABOUT US |
Audentes Fortunate Iuvat
Fortune Favors the Bold
We're not your traditional regional total rewards association -- in fact, we've completely reimagined the professional association concept, as the paradigms of old haven't kept up with how compensation and benefits are viewed, valued and delivered in today's economy.
Our membership base is diverse and broad in every respect, made up of business owners, Board members, CEO's, CFO's, COO's, CHRO's, senior-level managers, HR professionals, and of course compensation and benefits specialists -- basically, any role that has skin in the game when it comes to managing the total rewards program for an organization.
Our members are practitioners only -- we purposefully exclude consultants from our membership in order to keep the conversations pure, authentic and real.
And we're big -- with over 11,000 members, we're far larger than any other regional total rewards association in the world. We believe it's because we provide a cleaner, simpler, more focused suite of services than our traditionally-organized colleagues.
OUR FOCUS AS AN ASSOCIATION IS TO PROVIDE THE FOLLOWING TO OUR MEMBERS SO THAT THEY MIGHT REAP THE FULL BENEFITS OF POSSESSING A WELL-DESIGNED, TIGHTLY MANAGED STRATEGIC REWARDS PROGRAM:
The Program: An easy-to-follow, informative roadmap laying out what a successful total rewards program looks like, with metrics so that you can monitor how well you're hitting the mark
The Toolkit: Tools, templates and resources to help you establish, grow, develop and manage your program
The Intel: Up-to-the-minute news, reports and survey data to help keep you informed, with an emphasis on exclusive Bay-Area focused data
The Contacts: Local Bay Area industry and professional networks you can turn to for local help and assistance, providing you with current, relevant "best practice" perspectives
The Help: Associate-only access to BACABA Advisory Services for those times when you run into a band-width or expertise challenge
BACABA Leadership
Charles Sterling, PhD
Founder & President
Dr. Sterling is an award-winning Professor Emeritus in the Argyros College of Business and Economics at Chapman University, former head of Total Compensation for the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, previous Vice President of Corporate Compensation for Union Bank and former Head of Global Compensation at Mozilla Inc.
He has additional corporate total compensation experience working for GoPro, OpenTable, eBay, Wells Fargo, Visa International, Universal Music Group and Gilead Sciences.
His experience as a total compensation consultant is extensive, having operated his own consulting firm (Sterling & Sterling, LLC) as well as serving as Principal Consultant within Mercer and Arthur J. Gallagher’s Human Capital practices, from which he retired in 2025 after working 40 years in the profession. His client experience cuts across a variety of industries including healthcare, higher education, technology, finance, entertainment and non-profit.
In addition to his PhD (Business Administration/I/O Psychology, The Ohio State University), Charles received both his Bachelor of Science and MBA in Business Administration from Michigan State University and is a Certified Compensation Professional (CCP). Charles is also certified in Executive Compensation Plan Design from the Wharton School of Business.
Charles served for three years on the Advisory Board for WorldatWork. He is a Fellow in the Royal Statistical Society and a member of the Econometric Society.
