Jim Tanner, '93: Minority Business Leader Award
Minority Business Leader Awards: Jim Tanner (Video)
Jim Tanner didn’t always want to be in sports. But as a North Carolina native, escaping basketball was nearly impossible.
During his time at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Tanner happened to befriend athletes who would happen to go on to play in the NBA and NFL.
But he wasn’t thinking of of a career using the connections. Instead, Tanner pursued jobs in corporate finance, where he learned how to negotiate, close business deals and draft contracts.
An interest in politics eventually brought him to the District, where he worked on Bill Clinton’s re-election campaign.
Eventually, Tanner pivoted to use his law degree from the University of Chicago, taking a job offer as a midlevel corporate associate with Williams & Connolly in 1997. At the time, the firm was building a sports practice.
“It was something that I was interested in but never expected to have a career in,” Tanner, who was part of the entertainment and sports law society in law school, says. “When this came up, I thought it fit my skill set. I thought it would be an exciting career and just pursued it.”
Tanner went on to found Tandem Sports + Entertainment, which just celebrated its fifth anniversary this past October, after deciding on yet another career path — one where he was in control and could make decisions that were best for the company and its clients.
As a full-service sports marketing, management and communications agency, Tandem’s roster of athletes includes Tim Duncan, Jeremy Lin, Ray Allen, Ryan Meisinger and Matt Bowman.
In the past 18 months, Tandem has negotiated $70 million worth of contracts, including those for the 2008 and 2011 No. 2 overall NBA draft picks Michael Beasley and Derrick Williams, respectively.
As a the leader of a minority-owned business, Tanner takes workplace diversity seriously, even though his firm is small at 12 employees.
“One of the things I’m most proud of at Tandem is we’re extremely diverse,” he says. “We’re evenly represented with men, with women, younger, older, black, white — and that’s something I really think is important.”
Read more at Washington Business Journal