Page 6 - BusinessWest July 10, 2023

The leadership team at TMG, from left: Emily Leonczyk, Irene Costello, Jennie Markens, Lauren Zuber, Brian Westerlind, and Ben Markens.
Staff Photo
façade of the Springfield Sheraton — an image that many TMG workers can see out the windows of their offices.
Meanwhile, in one of the small conference rooms just off the front entrance are two rows of pencil sketches of TMG’s employees,
a collection that has grown larger as the company has over the past several years.
The sketches, which make great conversation pieces for guests, speak to the concept of ‘team’ and how it is valued at TMG, which, as noted earlier, started as a consulting firm in 1988
that was niched to the folding-carton industry, a business that is well-represented in one of the conference rooms with a number of packaging products, including a Lucky Charms box.
TMG provided assistance to that industry
on everything from pricing to strategy, said Ben Markens, adding that the leaders of the industry eventually asked him to become president of their association.
“I told them ‘no,’ because I already had a job,” he recalled. “They said, ‘figure it out,’ and we became what’s known as an association-management company. There’s a whole story out there about how I invented the concept of association management, but ... that’s another story.”
While he may or may not have invented the business, Markens and the team that has been assembled has certainly come to be a leader in an industry he described as simply the outsourced management of associations — in TMG’s case, manufacturing groups and medical entities,
representing everyone from podiatrists to neonatal intensive-care nurses.
Early on, Ben and Jennie made the decision to do this from Springfield. The PPC wanted them to move to the Washington, D.C. area — the association is based in Alexandria, Va. — and they considered basing it in or near their home in Westfield, but they ultimately decided the venture needed to be in Springfield and its downtown.
That move represented a risk in and of itself, said Jennie Markens, noting that 2008 was the height of the Great Recession,
“We have a very strong bench of cross-trained individuals.”
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6 JULY 10, 2023
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