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Stefan C. Nicholas, Attorney

COLUMN = LAW

Stefan C. Nicholas is a director and chair of Jackson & Campbell’s Estates and Trusts practice group and a member of the Business Law practice group. He has extensive experience in drafting wills, trusts, and all ancillary documents in connection with estate and gift-tax planning, as well as asset-protection planning, including both on- and off-shore asset-protection trusts and the use of corporate entities. Stefan also has extensive experience with sophisticated wealth transfer techniques such as grantor retained interest trusts, qualified personal residence trusts, and defective grantor trusts.

In addition, Stefan specializes in developing exit-planning strategies for business owners, and has counseled clients on estate planning, business succession planning, and asset-protection planning with an emphasis on managing the tax impact that liquidity events have on a client’s personal assets. He has guided clients on completing mergers, acquisitions, and divestitures, and has negotiated partnership, management, shareholder, employment, and confidentiality agreements on behalf of numerous clients.

Stefan earned his JD from the University of Virginia School of Law, where he was a member of the Moore Society of International Law and the Black Law Students Association. Before that, Stefan earned his master’s in Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia Wilson School of Foreign Affairs. He received a BA in International Relations from Georgetown University, which he followed with academic stints in Prague in the Czech Republic and Berlin, Germany, where he earned a Certificate of German Language and Culture from the Goethe Institute.

Stefan is admitted to practice law in the District of Columbia and the State of New York.

Stefan is a member of the American Bar Association and the Estates and Trusts Bar of the District of Columbia. He is a member of the Wealth Counsel and the Business Enterprise Institute, and is currently treasurer and a member of the board of directors for DC Vote and the chairman of the board of the Hilda & Charles Mason Charitable Foundation. Stefan also serves on the advisory board for Eagle Bank and the George Washington Cancer Institute, as well as the Alumni Board for Georgetown Day School.

Never cut what you can untie.”

– Joseph Joubert

There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.”

– Leonard Cohen

Think of yourself as on the threshold of unparalleled success. A whole, clear, glorious life lies before you. Achieve! Achieve!”

– Andrew Carnegie

Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value.”

– Albert Einstein

Speaking more than one language is no longer just an asset in today’s job market; it is a requirement.”

– Tom Adams, CEO, Rosetta Stone

To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.”

– Robert Louis Stevenson

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. 
Now put foundations under them.”

– Henry David Thoreau

If people like you they’ll listen to you; if they trust you, they’ll do business with you.”

– Zig Ziglar

A person who learns to juggle six balls will be more skilled than the person who never tries to juggle more than three.”

– Marilyn vos Savant

Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing.”

– Abraham Lincoln

Nothing is a mistake. There’s no win and no fail. There’s only make.”

– Corita Kent

The best hobbies are the ones that take us furthest from our primary occupation.”

– Dr. Evelyn Vogel, Dexter

It is only when the mind is free from the old that it meets everything anew, and in that there is joy.”

– J. Kristnhamurti, The First and Last Freedom

Don’t follow, lead. Don’t copy, create. Don’t start, finish. Don’t sit still, move. Don’t fit in, stand out. Don’t sit quietly, speak up. (Not all the time, sure, but more often.)”

– Seth Godin

That man is richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.”

– Henry David Thoreau

What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?”

– Magical

There is little success where there is little laughter.”

– Andrew Carnegie

It is to no purpose to turn away from the real nature of the affair because the honor of its elements excites repugnance.

– Carl von Clausewitz, On War

The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Don’t sit down and wait for the opportunities to come. Get up and make them!”

– Madam C.J. Walker

That which grows fast withers as rapidly; that which grows slowly endures.”

– J.G. Holland, novelist

Why am I whispering when I have something to say?”

– Eve Ensler

To follow, without halt, one aim: There’s the secret of success.”

– Anna Pavlova

We are perfectionists. We are hungry to work all the time. We are entertained by every aspect of business and we never want to stop working.”

– Suzy Welch

If you were independently wealthy and never had to work a day in your life, would you still choose to spend your time attempting to become a successful entrepreneur?”

– Steven Schussler

This is the age when magical technologies make more and more radically fun ideas plausible, even easy. You’re only limited by your creativity.”

– Martha Beck

Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”

– Nelson Mandela

If you look at what you have in life, you’ll always have more.
 If you look at what you don’t have in life, you’ll never have enough.”

– Oprah Winfrey

It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.”

– William Shakespeare

Women once had the goal of being Superwoman; I think most of us now simply strive to have a super day.”

– Author, Activist Lee Woodruff

There’s nowhere you can be that isn’t where you’re meant to be…”

– John Lennon

Passion makes perfect.”

– Eugene Biro

If we all did the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.”

– Thomas Edison

Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.”

– Robert Frost

The mind is everything. What you think, you become.”

– Buddha

Be bold and mighty forces will come to your aid.”

– Basil King

You’ve got to be willing to crash and burn. If you’re afraid of failing, you won’t get very far.”

– Steve Jobs

Ambition is the germ from which all growth of nobleness proceeds.”

– Thomas Dunn

Success is about finding a livelihood that brings joy, self-sufficiency, and a sense of contributing.”

– Anita Roddick

There is only one success – to be able to spend your life in your own way.”

– Christopher Morley

Whosoever knows how to fight well is not angry. Whosoever knows how to conquer enemies does not fight them.”

– Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

I may not be able to change what takes place, but I can always choose to change my thinking.”

– Michelle Sedas

Most people never pick up the phone and call. Most people never ask, and that’s what separates the people who do things from the people who just dream about them.”

– Steve Jobs

If you do not tell the truth about yourself
, you cannot tell it about other people.”

– Virginia Woolf

The follow-your-gut mentality of the entrepreneur has the potential to take you anywhere you want to go or run you right out of business.”

– Bill Rancic, "The Apprentice"

If it really was a no-brainer to make it on your own in business there’d be millions of no-brained, harebrained individuals quitting their day jobs.”

– Bill Rancic, "The Apprentice"

How do you stay resilient? It’s about momentum. Like riding a bicycle. If you stop you fall over. So I keep pedaling.”

– Diane Lane

Many people prefer to play it safe when it comes to business matters. Are you willing to take risks in the pursuit of entrepreneurial success?”

– Steven Schussler

Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love.”

– Jalaluddin Rumi

Spend the afternoon. You can’t take it with you.”

– Annie Dillard