I got the advocacy bug early in my association management career. It was in the mid-1990s, and I was working at the Clinical Laboratory Management Association. Our highly fragmented and competitive industry was facing large Medicare cuts that would have likely closed many independent laboratories. We assembled a coalition of competing organizations and identified an ally in Congress, Senator Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, who saw a threat to a local industry and its jobs. We were able to defeat the cuts.
About a decade later, while I was at the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS), we learned of a bill passed in New Jersey that would tax a variety of professional services, including elective plastic surgery. We assembled a coalition of competing specialties, including dermatology and otolaryngology as well as the American College of Surgeons and the AMA. Each organization contributed $25,000 to help assemble a fund that...
