Making National TAMID More Real At UMD/GW Regional Event
By: Stu Krantz, TAMID at Maryland
My TAMID experience, until two weeks ago, was fairly chapter-centric. I was a TAMID Fellow (on the 2015 Fellowship, clearly the best Fellowship) and just wrapped up my term as a Regional Director, so I definitely had exposure to, and involvement with, National TAMID. That said, as chapter co-president of TAMID at Maryland, it’s always hard to translate the awesomeness of national TAMID to the chapter level, and to communicate it to general members who have only a vague idea of the apparatus that exists and the membership at other schools.
That’s why I was so excited to have been able to include TAMID at GW in our latest speaker event. Our awesome VP Fund, Dalia Bauman, worked at Clarity Capital last summer on the Fellowship. One of her bosses, Tsvi Mark, was in the DC area and we were able to bring Tsvi in for a program. In addition to securing four cosponsorships from some of the leading clubs in Maryland’s business school, a delegation of TAMID at GW members made the trek to College Park for our Regional Event.
Tsvi delivered a great talk on private debt, interest rates and global macro trends. It definitely scratched the itch of some of our Finance-oriented members and clubs, but I think everyone got something out of it. The room was overflowing — standing room only!
Afterwards, we had a combined social event with the TAMID at GW visitors which turned out to be just as important. The social aspect was very fun, obviously, but provided a perfect forum for our members, especially our new class, to interact with members from another chapter. This allowed the formerly abstract concept of a “national TAMID network” to be made more real and tangible. Everyone seemed to get along really well, which highlights one of my favorite things about TAMID — every chapter does a weirdly incredible job of selecting members with personalities that fit really well.
This Regional Event confirmed a long-held philosophy of mine — that the best way to communicate something is personally. I could lecture about each chapter in TAMID, each national group, etc., but I think it’s far more effective to let the members discover and make connections for themselves (and, in this sense, to give them a taste of what the Fellowship is like). If members really like and value the other people in TAMID, they are going to be enthusiastic about participation in our group almost regardless of the actual work we do. Every chapter is always thinking about best practices for member engagement, and I would encourage every President and VP Membership to consider our approach at Maryland.