Journal of Corporate Renewal

Sept 2016

IN MEMORIAM

Former TMA Global President and Chairman Peter L. Tourtellot, CTP, a tireless advocate and leading voice for the development of high professional standards for the turnaround and restructuring industry, died in a Greensboro, North Carolina, hospital on July 16. He was 78.

A founding board member of the TMA Carolinas Chapter and co-founder of Anderson, Bauman, Tourtellot Vos & Co., a Greensboro turnaround firm, Tourtellot served as TMA Global president in 2001 and chairman in 2002. He was a former chairman of the Association of Certified Turnaround Professionals (ACTP), a sister organization that later merged with TMA Global, and he subsequently chaired TMA Global’s Certification Oversight Committee, which assumed many of the duties previously performed by ACTP. Tourtellot was also a former president of the TMA Carolinas Chapter.

“It was a clear love affair between Peter and TMA,” said Thomas D. Hays III, 1997 TMA Global President and 2003 ACTP chair.

In addition, Tourtellot developed the Cornerstone 15 program in 2003 as part of TMA’s 15th anniversary celebration and spearheaded efforts to raise $1.5 million for the board designated endowment fund to support the organization’s education initiatives. He was a force in transitioning much of the work involved with running TMA Global from volunteer members to a professional staff. Hays said Tourtellot also championed revisions to strengthen TMA’s Code of Ethics and efforts to improve CTP education programs.

As chairman of the Editorial Advisory Board, Tourtellot also had led efforts to convert the Journal of Corporate Renewal from a newsletter into a magazine, which debuted in April 1998.

“He was always plugged into every
strategic change in some way, shape,
or form,” said John R. Rizzardi, TMA
Global’s 2003 president. “What I
remember most about it was just
how passionate he would get about
issues that he believed in. When he
believed something was going to be
good for TMA, you knew about it.”
One of those causes was the CTP
program. Tourtellot was a passionate
proponent of TMA’s efforts to establish
the CTP designation as a standard
of excellence in the turnaround and
restructuring industry. Edward J. Sanz,
CTP, who worked with Tourtellot at
ABTV, said turnaround professionals who
hadn’t already obtained their CTP were
required to become certified within a
year of joining the firm. Sanz was among
a group of three ABTV professionals
who purchased the firm earlier this
year from Tourtellot and another of its
co-founders, Neal A. Anderson, CTP.

“He was also very attuned to raising the bar for the profession. He always envisioned it as going from a band of consultants to a true profession with high levels of expectations and