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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.

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

– John Lennon

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

– Jalaluddin Rumi

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

– J.G. Holland, novelist

I find out what the world needs, then I proceed to invent.”

– Thomas Edison

The quality of your life is directly related to the amount of uncertainty you can comfortably live with.”

– Tony Robbins

My job is my hobby. I come to work to play.”

– Uli Becker, president, Reebok International

We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations.”

– Charles R. Swindoll

When we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard or welcomed. But when we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak.”

– Audre Lorde

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

– J.G. Holland, novelist

Entrepreneurs willingly assume responsibility for the success or failure of a venture and are answerable for all its facets.”

– Victor Kiam

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

Education is an admirable thing to have, but it is well to remember that nothing worth knowing can be taught.”

– Oscar Wilde

We are not meant to resolve all contradictions, but to live with them and rise above them.”

– William Blake

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

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

– Albert Einstein

That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”

– Friedrich Nietzsche

‎Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way.”

– Booker T. Washington

Things don’t change. You change your way of looking, that’s all.”

– Carlos Castaneda

There are children playing in the street who could solve some of my top problems in physics, because they have modes of sensory perception that I lost long ago.”

– J. Robert Oppenheimer

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

– Basil King

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

– Christopher Morley

Who cares if my glass is half empty or half full; I still have something to drink.”

– Optimism rules

Some things are destined to be—it just takes us a couple of tries
to get there.”

– J.R. Ward, Lover Mine

When I was younger I thought success was being a star, driving nice cars, having groupies. But today I think the most important thing is to live your life with integrity.

– Ellen DeGeneres

There are risks and costs to a program of action. But they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.”

– JFK

I was taught at a very young age that you can do whatever you want to, but you have to make it happen — not just talk about it.”

– Kathleen Jo Ryan

Our deepest wishes are whispers of our authentic selves. We must learn to respect them. We must learn to listen.”

– Sarah Ban Breathnach

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”

– T.S. Eliot

Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity.”

– Ray Bradbury

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

Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”

– Seneca

If your success is not on your own terms, if it looks good to the world but does not feel good in your heart, it is not success at all.”

– Anna Quindlen

Successful people are always looking for opportunities to help others. Unsuccessful people are always asking, ‘What’s in it for me?’”

– Brian Tracy

Treat the attainment of happiness in the same way an entrepreneur would approach building a business — with a vision, plan, goals, and a systematic approach.”

– Ted Leonsis

‎The biggest flaw in our existing theory of capitalism lies in its misrepresentation of human nature.”

– Muhammad Yunus

If you do work that you love, and the work fulfills you, the rest will come.”

– Oprah Winfrey

In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.”

– Albert Einstein

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.”

– Mark Twain

In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.

– Robert Frost

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands, but in seeing with new eyes.”

– Marcel Proust

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

– Nelson Mandela

Remove those ‘I want you to like me’ stickers from your forehead
and, instead, place them where they truly will do the most good—on your mirror.”

– Susan Jeffers

Success is the necessary misfortune of life, but it is only to the very unfortunate that it comes early.”

– Anthony Trollope

No longer talk at all about the kind of man a good man ought to be, but be such.”

– Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

A man without a smiling face
 should not open a shop.”

– Chinese Proverb

A people who mean to be their Governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”

– James Madison

The critical ingredient is getting off your butt and doing something.”

– Nolan Bushnell, founder, Chuck E. Cheese's

You can only become truly accomplished at something you love. Don’t make money your goal. Instead, pursue the things you love doing.”

– Maya Angelou

Anything not worth doing well is not worth doing.”

– Warren Buffett

When I dare to be powerful—to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.”

– Audre Lorde