Virtual Dean’s Roundtable with Jeffrey Tannenbaum ’88, founder and chairman of Titan Grove, Thursday, April 8, 2021
Throughout the school year, the dean hosts roundtable discussions with prominent guests who have utilized their law degrees in a variety of nontraditional ways. Guests discuss their work experiences and share valuable insights about how they found their chosen path. While typically held over lunch with a small group of students, we will now be hosting these conversations virtually. Please note that the roundtables are informal and off-the-record.
Jeffrey Tannenbaum ’88, who will be the Dean’s guest on Thursday, April 8, is currently founder and chairman of Titan Grove, a private holding company focused on building mission-driven businesses that demonstrate the ability for companies to be both model corporate citizens and highly profitable, growth oriented enterprises.
Over the past three decades, Jeff has been at the forefront of the development of the impact investing, private equity, hedge fund, and clean energy industries. In 2017, he founded 5G smart city infrastructure company NextEdge Networks LLC and served as its chairman through its growth and successful exit in 2020. NextEdge was the first wireless infrastructure company in the US to be a certified B Corporation, a designation that seeks to show that business can be a force for good.
In 2014, Jeff founded, served as board chairman, and helped build sPower LLC into the nation’s largest private utility-scale solar developer. sPower was sold in 2017 to the AES Corporation in the largest sale of a solar company at that time. Prior to sPower, Jeff founded Fir Tree Partners in 1994 and led the firm’s global growth until 2017. Fir Tree helped pioneer the hybrid private equity/hedge fund model and was a frequent member of Institutional Investor’s “The Hedge Fund 100,” which is a list of the largest 100 funds in the world. Before founding Fir Tree, Jeff spent his career in the private equity industry at Kohlberg & Company, beginning as the analyst for Jerome Kohlberg, firm founder and one of the pioneers of the modern private equity industry.
Through his philanthropic work, Jeff focuses on domestic job creation and sustainable capitalism through innovations in public policy, finance, and entrepreneurship. Jeff organized our nation’s first major bi-partisan symposium focused on eliminating foreign oil dependence (held at NYU Law), operates a Scientist in Residence program, and helped found the PACE energy efficiency finance industry, which is now a multi-billion dollar industry. He also hosted the Obama Energy and Climate Cabinet for their “100 Day” planning retreat and recently launched The CLEEN Project to help the Biden-Harris administration accelerate their work to curb climate change.
He is a lecturer at Cambridge University where he teaches a global investing class, received a JD from NYU Law, an MBA degree from NYU, and graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Tulane University.
The roundtable will begin at 12:45 PM and end at 2:00 PM via the Zoom videoconferencing platform. It is open to 18 interested JD and graduate students. In order to achieve a representational mix of students, we will designate a proportionate number of seats to JD students and graduate students. Within each group (JD or LLM), attendees will be selected randomly from all students who have expressed interest. Once selected, we will send you the necessary Zoom details to join the discussion.
If you would like to attend a virtual roundtable, please sign up in advance by emailing Ken Seagreaves at ken.seagreaves@nyu.edu. Please indicate whether you are a JD or graduate student.