Thoughts from Mark Melickian,
VP-Communications, Sugar Felsenthal Grais & Hammer LLP

Lost Links

The TMA website contains layers upon layers of information about our organization’s membership (local, regional, and national) and current activities. There is also a smidgen of information about our organization’s backstory, in the form of a timeline.  The timeline tells you that the TMA’s genesis was a series of meetings held at the Kenan Institute for Private Enterprise at the University of North Carolina in 1987. It tells you that the TMA, as an organization, was officially incorporated in January 1988 in North Carolina. You learn that the first official TMA seminar, titled "Corporate Decline—Problems and Resolutions," was held at the Kenan Institute in May of 1988, and that the TMA broke out of North Carolina later that year with its first annual conference, held in Arlington, Virginia, in September 1988 and themed "Corporate Renewal: A Strategy for the 1990s."

That’s right, you younger members (and maybe not so younger members) of Chicago/Midwest—we might call ourselves a founding chapter (or, as I’ve sometimes heard in mixed company, “the” founding chapter), but it all started in Dean Smith country.  The original chapters (including Chicago/Midwest) were founded in 1990, under the umbrella of the North Carolina entity. TMA remained a North Carolina entity until 2005, when it merged into a newly-created Illinois not for profit of the same name.

On the current TMA timeline, the Kenan Institute—going strong in 2016—merits only a couple of lines, although the TMA may not exist but for its seminal influence. The Kenan Institute was founded in 1985 within the University of North Carolina’s business school (now known as the Kenan-Flagler School of Business). Its initial director was Rollie Tillman Jr., then-UNC Vice Chancellor for University Relations and a professor of marketing at the business school. Tillman was one of the 31 founders of the TMA and an ex-official member of the original board. The list of founders can be found at http://www.turnaround.org/founders.

In order to learn more about the TMA’s birth and its relationship with the Kenan Institute, I contacted a TMA founder, Peter Tourtellot, CTP, currently a principal at Anderson Bauman Tourtellot Vos in Greensboro, North Carolina. Tourtellot described the TMA’s genesis as “inadvertent.” Professor Tillman had been following stories in the Wall Street Journal and other business news organs about lawyers and accountants that were turning around failing companies. He wondered about these individuals, and about their skills: Was there something there that could be integrated into a master of business administration curriculum? The professor sent letters out to dozens of these professionals and invited them to a two-day meeting at the Kenan Institute. The three dozen or so professionals who showed from around the country did not, for the most part, know each other, but by the close of the meetings, had recognized the foundation of a networking association. Tourtellot indicated that Tim Finley (The Finley Group; Alvarez & Marsal) led the initial effort to organize and incorporate. The organization’s original “office” was located within the Kenan Institute, then moved to Cary, North Carolina, and from there to Washington D.C., and eventually, to Chicago.

The TMA has grown from its founding 31 members to over 9,000 members located on six continents. The Carolinas chapter, founded in 1994, now exceeds 180 members. The Chicago/Midwest chapter, as we proudly know, currently exceeds 900 members.

While both entities have flourished, the bond between the TMA and its original host has long been lost. There is a story there, according to Tourtellot, best left for another day. In any event, in 2003, the TMA Annual Report, issued for the organization’s 15th year anniversary, spent some time waxing nostalgic about TMA’s origin story and its North Carolina roots, but later annual reports contain no mention of the Kenan Institute. The Carolinas chapter executive, Anna Chandler, indicated to me that in her time with the Carolinas chapter she was not aware of any ongoing relationship between the chapter and the Kenan Institute or the Kenan-Flagler School of Business. 

So what’s the point of this history lesson? Even foundational relationships can be lost for any number of reasons, and certainly will be lost if not revisited, with purpose, from time to time. For example, that “Founders” hyperlink listed above? I found that link on Google, after determining that the hyperlink to the “Founders” page on the TMA timeline leads to “Page not Found.” By the time you read this, that lost link should be fixed. 

Having returned with a bagful of business cards from new contacts made at the 2016 Distressed Investing Conference in Las Vegas, and some memory of the conference itself, I put forth the following observation: While some lost links (like some memories of Vegas) are better left lost, others are worth revisiting, and the value of our social events is not just in the making of new “friends” but in re-discovering links to the past. Last year, I ran into a law school classmate in Las Vegas that I had not seen in 20 years–turned out, he fell into this restructuring thing, just as I did, and over time became very engaged in the TMA. So we exchanged business cards and, better yet, had dinner. A lost link, no longer lost, an outcome just as valuable as shaking the hands of dozens of people I may never see again.