Allan Head Receives NABE's Bolton Award

Article Date: Friday, August 06, 2010

Written By: Russell Rawlings

From left, Past President Mike Colombo, Executive Director Allan Head, President Gene  Pridgen and President-Elect Martin Brinkley at Bolton Award ceremony.

Allan B. Head, executive director of the North Carolina Bar Association, was honored Friday as the 2010 recipient of the Bolton Award for Outstanding Bar Leadership, the National Association of Bar Executive’s highest honor.  

The award was presented in San Francisco in conjunction with the annual meetings of the NABE, the National Conference of Bar Presidents and the National Conference of Bar Foundations.

 

The Bolton Award is presented annually to a bar executive who epitomizes the highest standard of professional excellence. It is named in honor of Fred Bolton, executive director and secretary of the Pennsylvania Bar Association from 1966-77.

 

Bob Wells, executive director of the South Carolina State Bar and last year’s recipient, presented the award. (See video of presentation and acceptance at bottom of this page.)

 

Bob Wells, left, presents Bolton Award to Allan Head.

“He is a man of faith and a leader in his church,” Wells stated. “Every summer he takes the senior highs to Appalachia to help the needy. You can imagine the ripple effect this man has had on those youth and the community, and how it has spread across all the years that he has done this.”

 

The magnitude of the honor, coupled with a standing ovation, briefly overwhelmed Head at the outset of his acceptance remarks.

 

“How many of you have ever been Girl Scouts or Brownies, Boy Scouts or Cub Scouts?” he asked. “Then you know what it means ‘to leave the campsite better than you found it.’

 

“When I joined the North Carolina legal profession in 1969, I became a part of an association of North Carolina lawyers committed to civility, public service and professionalism, and I had done nothing to earn or deserve the high regard in which North Carolina lawyers were held.

 

“I soon realized I owed a tremendous debt to those lawyers who had come before me. Ever since then, I have felt a strong sense of responsibility to do all that I could ‘to leave the campsite better than I found it.’ ”

 

Allan Head accepts Bolton Award.

The brief address then ended just as it began.

 

“It is an honor to serve as executive director of the North Carolina Bar Association, and it is a great honor to receive the Bolton Award,” Head stated.

 

“I look forward to coming to work every day;

 

“I love the people I work with, and for; and

 

“I am very proud to be a lawyer.”

A native of Atlanta, Head received his undergraduate degree from Wake Forest University in 1966 and his juris doctor from the Wake Forest University School of Law in 1969. Following law school, he served four years as the lawyer assigned to the U.S. Army Security Agency in Kassel and Augsburg, Germany.

 

Upon completion of his military service in 1973, he joined the staff of the NCBA as executive secretary. Since 1981, he has served as executive director and treasurer of the NCBA and secretary-treasurer of the NCBA Foundation, and as treasurer of the Wake County Bar Association.

 

In 2006-07, Head served as president of the NABE.

 

Click here to access a complete resume on the NCBA website.

 

The nomination was supported by NCBA Past Presidents Mike Colombo and Clark Smith, fellow Executive Directors Denny Ramey (Ohio) and Tom Pyrz (Indiana), and NCBA staff members Whitney von Haam and Kim Vaughan.

 

“Without hesitation, I believe Allan possesses the professionalism, character, integrity, vision, leadership, service to the profession, and other qualities required of recipients of this award,” Colombo stated.

 

“During Allan’s tenure as executive director of the North Carolina Bar Association, membership has grown from about 3,500 to over 15,000, our budget has grown about 35-fold, and our staff has increased tenfold. He was instrumental in organizing our first sections, and now we have 28.”

 

Smith addressed Head’s leadership qualities in his letter of support.

 

“Allan is a superb leader,” Smith wrote. “He has been a leader not only to the North Carolina Bar Association, but at his church as an elder, at the local and national level of the YMCA and the National Association of Bar Executives.

 

“One of the things that impresses me most with his long tenure as executive director of the North Carolina Bar Association is that he is still on the cutting edge of innovations and change and is always looking for new programs and directions. He is the source of the most up-to-date information about what is going on with other bar organizations throughout the country.”

 

In North Carolina and beyond, Head is readily recognized as a tireless ambassador for the NCBA and the profession which it serves.

 

“Aside from the titles and roles which have attracted the highest amount of visibility and exposure, Allan Head’s greatest contributions to bar leadership go largely unseen except to the individual with whom he happens to be working at any given moment,” states the nomination narrative. “The numbers of presidents of the NCBA with whom he has served are counted easily enough, but it would take a mathematician to calculate all the bar leaders and bar members who have benefitted from their involvement with and exposure to Allan Head.

 

“The numbers of board members, section chairs, committee chairs, division chairs and staff members alone would be staggering; they take on exponential qualities when one figures in section councils, committee members and the like.

“And these are just the official positions – no one could even begin to estimate the number of lawyers, judges and other legal professionals who know Allan Head on a first-name basis and consider him a trusted friend and valued colleague.”

 

Founded in 1941, the NABE serves the staffs of bar associations and law-related organizations nationwide. An independent not-for-profit organization, the NABE has maintained formal working relations with the American Bar Association since 1953 through the ABA Division for Bar Services.

 

Membership in the NABE is comprised of more than 600 bar executives and senior staff members.