TLG Managing Partner Jeff Tenenbaum’s Acceptance Speech for Association TRENDS and CEO Update’s 2025 Association Industry Partner of the Year Award

March 13, 2025

Grand Hyatt Hotel

Washington, DC

I am humbled and thrilled to accept the 2025 Association Industry Partner of the Year award from Association TRENDS and CEO Update. Thank you very much, Brittany Carter and your incredible team. I am beyond grateful for this distinguished honor.

I am very fortunate to be joined today by all eight of my Tenenbaum Law Group colleagues, as well as my children. I couldn’t be happier that everyone could be here today.

This award was given to me, but an honor like this is never earned without a lot of help and support along the way. While I can’t thank everyone, I do want to acknowledge the remarkable, wonderful attorneys and staff at the Tenenbaum Law Group. When Nisha and I started the firm five years ago, I never imagined that we would grow so large, so fast. It’s been a helluva ride and I can’t wait to see where the next five years take us. A special shout-out to Nisha, who has been an unbelievable law partner and an invaluable key to our success. I also want to thank Steve Fellman, who gave me my start as a first-year lawyer at GKG in 1995, to Brock Landry, who recruited me to Venable in 1999, and to my many great colleagues and friends at Venable with whom I worked for 19 memorable years chairing the nonprofit practice there. Finally, thank you to all of our exceptional and loyal clients, as well as to all of you who have referred so many clients to us over the past five years.

As some of you know, following three years of working on Capitol Hill after college (tending bar on nights and weekends), I got my start in the association community working at ASAE in the Public Policy Division while going to law school at night. There was no opening in the Division but I successfully badgered then-Director Brian Pallasch – himself now an accomplished association CEO and a client of ours – into hiring me as an $8-an-hour intern doing public policy issues analysis. I later got the job managing the Legal Section. I am now 30 years removed from my departure from ASAE and my law school graduation, 30 years of practicing law, 30 years of representing associations and nonprofits, and 30 years of seeing more than you could ever imagine in the association world, the legal profession, and life. After all of that time and all of those experiences, you learn a lot.

Today, I thought I would share some of the lessons, qualities, principles, credos, and values that I have gleaned over the last 30 years, that have helped to propel my path to this point, and that have contributed to making me the person I am today. Some of these are learned from experience, some are gleaned through observing others, some are self-taught, and some are possibly just innate. I hope that you will appreciate them, identify with them, and that they can be of some help to you and others in the future.

As you may know, I have always been a fan of top-ten lists, but here are my top 15:

1. Be flexible, open-minded, and always willing to grow and change. Don’t be stubborn or believe that you are always right. Don’t be afraid to admit and own up to your mistakes. Learn from them and try not to repeat them.

2. Never talk down to your colleagues or clients. Show them trust and respect. Raise up and elevate your colleagues and enable your clients to take the credit. Don’t be afraid to share the spotlight. You don’t need to always get the accolades or have the byline. Be unselfish.

3. Be open, frank, real, and down-to-earth. Be as transparent as possible about your decision-making and explain the rationale for your decisions to the greatest extent that you can.

4. Always make sure that your colleagues’ family comes first. Be as flexible, understanding, and supportive as you can. Work is important, but family always needs to take precedence.

5. If you are going to write two books – Quarantine Cocktails and Association Tax Compliance Guide – try adding pictures to the tax book to make it a bit more stimulating! While Quarantine Cocktails was a lot more fun to write and is way more fun to read, Association Tax Compliance Guide is a sure-fire cure for even the worst case of insomnia.

6. Treat others like you want to be treated – this applies to everyone in your life and everyone you encounter. I have witnessed plenty of this in ways both good and bad. Treat people with respect, humility, and kindness. For the guys in the room, always be a gentleman in every sense of the word.

7. Take your work but not yourself too seriously. If you have an ego, tamp it down. Don’t let praise go to your head. Let others shine. I learned this from my first mentor in the association community – the late former ASAE CEO Bill Taylor – and have never forgotten it.

8. Always maintain extremely high standards for your work and never compromise or cut corners. It might go without saying but try to become the best you can at your craft, learn and grow as much as possible, become an expert in your field, demand the same of everyone around you (and recognize their accomplishments), and take great pride in your work.

9. Do whatever you can to maximize your leadership abilities and help to develop the leadership abilities of your colleagues. Leadership means guiding, inspiring, supporting, mentoring, leading by example, offering praise and compliments along with constructive criticism, and being a role model, but never micromanaging or demeaning others. Reward and incentivize high performers, lift them up, help them grow and develop, and do whatever you can to retain them for as long as you can.

10. Avoid any job that requires you to keep timesheets in six-minute increments. It’s horrible and the only part of my job that I don’t like.

11. Give back in every way you can – to the association community, through volunteer board service and charitable endeavors, to aspiring and young attorneys and association executives, to those looking to make a career change into your field. Always make time for a 30-minute call or coffee meeting. For me, this has consisted primarily of giving countless speaking presentations and writing countless articles on nonprofit legal issues, being a mentor, responding to questions on ASAE and other online forums, and meeting with those who seek my advice, insights, and help.

12. While it may seem trite, teamwork matters – with both your colleagues and your clients. Be collaborative, be creative, and don’t try to go it solo or think that you always know what is best. The finest work product usually results from collaboration. We see this first-hand every day at our firm.

13. When things are not going well, you are having a tough day, or you are stressed, don’t take it out on your colleagues. This can be challenging to do sometimes but it is really important to compartmentalize and try hard to segregate your stress and pressure from your work and professional interactions.

14. Be positive, upbeat, and an optimist, view the glass as half full, and bring enthusiastic energy to your daily work. It makes a big difference. And try to have as much fun as you can in everything you do.

15. Work on your emotional intelligence. Whatever EQ I have, huge credit goes to my Mom. Emotional intelligence matters more than you may realize – with your clients, in your office, and in every aspect of your life. Be thoughtful, be self-aware, be in tune with your emotions and those of others, and use this awareness to guide your thinking and behavior.

To sum things up, I am a very lucky guy. Yes, I work hard and I work a lot (like, all of the time). But I also play hard, laugh a lot, travel frequently to great places, spend way too much time in good restaurants, and live life to the fullest. I get to come up with creative cocktails that people seem to really enjoy. I am blessed with the most amazing children and family; I could not be more proud of them and love them so much. My Philadelphia Eagles won the Super Bowl last month and I was there with my brother to witness the crushing victory! I work with a rockstar team that hits it out of the park every day. We also have a ton of fun working and spending time together, and we have been recognized with all of the top honors and recognition in our field each year, which has been very gratifying. We have an ever-growing, incredibly diverse client base that enables us to work with hundreds of the country’s top associations and nonprofits each year on the cutting-edge legal issues they face. No day is the same, there is never a dull moment, and our clients most definitely appreciate us. I have always loved practicing law, but I have never had as much fun as I have had in the last five years.

I have sat in this audience for decades watching highly accomplished association executives and industry partners accept their distinguished honors, always with great respect and admiration. After 30 years of providing legal counsel to associations and nonprofits, I could not be more thrilled, honored, and excited to accept this award today. Thank you to everyone who has supported, mentored, and worked with me to help me get to this day. I am beyond humbled, grateful, and just very happy. Thanks again to Brittany Carter and her talented, dedicated team at Association TRENDS and CEO Update, and thanks to all of you for being here on this special day for me.

– Jeffrey S. Tenenbaum