Challenge for a new year: building upon past successes.

• Author: Wilson, Betty M.
• Position: President's Page

Transitions can be daunting and traumatic. Whether involving your tax department, your company, your professional association, or your personal life, transitions can be either energizing and uplifting or discomfiting and even a bit ugly. The key to ensuring the former and minimizing the latter is careful planning and sincere, mutual respect among all the affected parties. In stark contrast to the political transition underway in the United States (and evidenced by the recent conventions in Philadelphia and Los Angeles), TEI's recent change of leadership was uncommonly smooth and amicable. The absence of ill will, insult, and abuse in Institute transitions, the continuity and unity of goals, is not new -- indeed, a hallmark of TEI has long been its congeniality -- but in light of what many of us encounter in other aspects of our lives, we would do well not to take the smoothness of TEI's transitions for granted.

The credit for TEI's most recent transition belongs first and foremost to my predecessor as President, Chuck Shewbridge, and then to the Institute's staff. They helped to prepare me and the Institute for the change. I thank them, and all of the members who made my journey to TEI's presidency possible. I also owe a special debt of gratitude to the members of the St. Louis Chapter where I began my TEI career nearly 25 years ago. Thanks, too, to my former colleagues at ITT Financial and Caesars World, whose indulgence and support made it possible for me to serve as a member and then chair of TEI's Corporate Tax Management Committee, as a member of the Board and the Executive Committee, and then an officer. Finally, I want to acknowledge the commitment of my new employer, MGM Mirage, and the unwavering support of my husband Jerry, without whom I could not succeed.

A Hard Act to Follow

Let me return to Chuck Shewbridge and his accomplishments. Chuck was on the go throughout his term as president. He was the one under the figurative Klieg lights, repeatedly testifying before Congress on corporate tax shelters and interest and penalty reform. He was the one who led the delegations to the Institute's liaison meetings in Washington and Ottawa, who affixed his name and hence his reputation to each and every position paper that TEI filed, and who presided so ably over the Annual and Midyear Conferences. Chuck devoted an extraordinary amount of time and effort to TEI, and the organization is the better for it.

But Chuck's contribution goes...