Page 5 - BusinessWest July 10, 2023

Richard F. Burkhart, CPA and Salvatore J. Pizzanelli, CPA, JD, PFS
The talented team at Burkhart Pizzanelli
Accounting
Julie M. Quink, CPA and Deborah J. Penzias, CPA
The talented team at Burkhart Pizzanelli provides
provides expertise in a full range of accounting
and financial services. Feel free to call on us at Consulting 413.734.9040.Feel free to call on us at 413.734.9040.
expertise in a full range of accounting and financial services.
201 Park Avenue, Suite 2, West Springfield, MA
201 Park Avenue, Suite 2 • West SpringfieldR, eMtAir0e1m08e9nt Plans T: 413.734.9040 • F: 413.781.5609
T: 413.734.9040 • F: 413.781.5609 • www.bppc.com www.bppc.com Tax Planning
ACCOUNTING • CONSULTING • LITIGATION • RETIREMENT PLANS • TAX PLANNING
Litigation
Jennie Markens’ portraits of staff members hang in TMG’s conference rooms.
Staff Photo
help with the many day-to-day aspects of managing their organizations. The desire to meet this need was the goal behind a broad
transformation of TMG from a consulting business focused on the folding-carton industry into an accredited association-management company, or AMC (yes, another acronym), a metamorphosis that began in 2008, when the company took on management of the PPC, the Paperboard Packaging Council.
Over the past 15 years, the company has expanded its reach and its portfolio of clients and accompanying acronyms, giving the associations it manages a Springfield mailing address and phone number. In the meantime, it has become a great place to work — figuratively, but also quite literally.
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Indeed, TMG has been named a ‘Great Place to Work’ by Forbes magazine, but beyond that designation, it has become a company with a culture grounded in the concept of teamwork and simply having fun, as we’ll see.
The firm has been in a serious growth mode in recent years, adding employees, taking on more space at 1350 Main St. — it now occupies a large chunk of the 11th floor — and bringing on a number of new clients.
There have been costs and risks associated with this rapid and profound expansion, said Ben Markens, but he prefers to look upon them as investments in the future of a venture that he and his wife, Jennie, built from the ground up with the intention of it remaining a force in Springfield, and in the AMC galaxy, for decades to come.
With that in mind, the pair have spent considerable time and energy on the matter of succession, and have put in place a plan whereby Leonczyk will become the majority shareholder over the next several years.
For this issue, BusinessWest talked with the
senior leadership team at TMG about the first
35 years of growth, change, and maturation,
and how there is more on tap for a company that has become a leader in what Ben Markens likes to call “the huge business that no one knows about.”
Portraits of the Artists
Among her many talents, Jennie Markens is a talented artist. And some of her work is on the walls at TMG.
Indeed, visitors to the office are greeted by a painting of the reflection of Springfield’s famous campanile clock tower in the glass
“There’s a whole story out there about how I invented the concept
of association management, but ... that’s another story.”
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