I am a Senior Partner in the Tampa Office of Shumaker, Loop & Kendrick, LLP., and have served as co-chair of the Corporate Practice Group and a member of the firm’s Executive Committee. My principal areas of practice are securities, governance, M&A and general corporate and business law. I am past Chair of the ABA Middle Market and Small Business Committee, served on two Advisory Committees on small and emerging businesses and small business capital formation for the Securities and Exchange Commission, and taught as an adjunct professor at the University of Florida Levin College of Law. I am actively involved in the Tampa Bay community, where I currently am a Board member of the Community Foundation Tampa Bay, the James Museum of Western and Wildlife Art, and The Florida Orchestra. I am past Board Chair of the Tampa Bay Convention and Visitors Burau, Leadership Tampa Alumni, the Hillsborough County Arts Council, and The Florida Orchestra.
What have you gained from your involvement with the Section?
Certainly more than I have given! It has been a thrill to have made so many personal, as well as professional, friends through the Section. I have become a more complete lawyer because I have learned so much about adjacent areas of law to which, as a business practitioner, I never would have been so deeply exposed. It has been a true honor to have received the Member of the Year Award and the Michael G. Williamson Lifetime Achievement Award from the BLS.
Which Committees/Task Forces have you served on within the Section?
I am past Chair of the Business Law Section and now chair the Section’s Long Range Planning Committee. I have been a member of the BLS Executive Council since 1984, served as Chair of the Corporations, Securities and Financial Institutions Committee and the Chapter 517 Task Force, as a member of numerous Chapter 607 drafting committees and the Opinion Standards Committee, and the BLS representative to the Council of Sections.
What is your favorite memory from your term as Chair? Time as Judicial Chair?
There are too many to choose from, but I was pleased to have been the first Chair to lead an Executive Council Retreat west of the Mississippi River (to San Francisco and the Napa Valley) and during that year shepherd a major revision of Chapter 607 into law.
What is something that will surprise our members to learn about you?
As a boy, my mother insisted that I learn to play the accordion (likely saving me from a career as a mediocre lounge singer and guitar player).