“Entrepreneurship has regained not only its respectability but its preeminent place in a successful, modern society.” Lewis Donelson is quick to say that entrepreneurship is the way of today’s business world, but that it is up to the entrepreneur to accept responsibility for making his or her dream come true. In 1954, he founded the law firm Donelson and Adams, and his approach was to treat law as a serious entrepreneurial venture, instead of the “Southern Gentleman’s Tradition,” that he thought it had become.
After a series of mergers through the years, today the firm is known as Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell and Berkowitz, Tennessee’s largest and perhaps most well-known firm with Lewis as the senior partner. The Firm has 11 offices in the Southeast, including a Washington office and a commercial office in Beijing, China. Mr. Donelson was a charter member of the Memphis City Council. He served as Commissioner of Finance and Administration under Governor Lamar Alexander from 1979-1981. His other civic involvements include Board of Directors of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, the Committee to Reform State Government, the Tennessee Business Roundtable, the Tennessee President’s Trust, and Co-Chairman of the National Advisory Board of the Hermitage.
1889
1994
“‘We are living in an age when entrepreneurship has regained not only its responsibility but its preeminent place in a successful, modern society. Entrepreneurship understands absolute values. If you do well, you are rewarded. If you do poorly and neglect your responsibilities or make stupid mistakes, you must suffer the penalties. Entrepreneurship understands that success and failure are the result of individual actions and not occasioned by the errors and frailties of society.”
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