WBA’s Scott Birrenkott Honored with WSAE Visionary Award

The Wisconsin Society of Association Executives (WSAE) has honored Scott Birrenkott, Wisconsin Bankers Association (WBA) director – legal, with a 2024 WSAE Visionary Award. The award was presented on November 19 at the WSAE Annual Summit at the Edgewater Hotel in Madison. The WSAE Visionary Award recognizes an outstanding commitment to one’s association, profession, or the association community’s innovation and leadership as evidenced by the core competencies of WSAE (leadership/mentorship, knowledge, and community impact). Birrenkott was recognized alongside three other outstanding association professionals:

• Association Leadership Award: Paul Flemming, Association of Equipment Manufacturers
• Hall of Fame Award: Tara Withington, CAE, Executive Director, Inc.
• Hall of Fame Award: Trisha Pugal, CAE, Back 9 Consultants & Pugal Consulting Services, LLC
• Young Professional Award: Sandy Schueller, Association Resource Center

Birrenkott works not only to support the WBA membership by providing quality resources and teaching professional development courses, but he also excels in his ability to lead co-workers with different perspectives and interests respectfully. His positive, forward-thinking approach compels those he works with to also be more driven in their goals and effective in their outcomes. Members are often familiar with him via the Legal Call Hotline, his teaching engagements, or video resources.

Birrenkott leads the WBA Innovation Team, a cross-departmental group of WBA staff, committed to keeping the organization on the leading edge. Under Birrenkott’s leadership, the Innovation Team has taken on wide-ranging initiatives from technological advances — including leveraging of AI — to modern workplace culture — including the development of onboarding best practices — and fostering a sense of belonging through employee engagement activities.

As the liaison to the WBA Financial Crimes Committee, Birrenkott has helped to further a preventative approach to combatting fraud and other crimes by facilitating communications on current schemes and keeping banks around the state alerted. That same type of leadership ability and innovative spirit has helped Birrenkott lead the WBA Trust Section through revisions of complex state trust laws.

To keep WBA members ready for the next step in their careers, Birrenkott teaches a full array of banking regulatory compliance laws to banking professionals in all stages of work experiences through WBA’s educational offerings. His ability to accurately relay complex concepts in a manner that helps bankers better understand the “whys” behind regulatory requirements helps the overall industry. In addition to his teaching commitments, Birrenkott also provides WBA members with current information on the banking industry’s constantly changing regulatory, legislative, and judicial requirements through various writings including for the WBA Compliance Journal and the Wisconsin Banker publication. Merging Birrenkott’s teaching skills with his tech-savviness, he has put forth new resources for the membership — including hosting WBA Legal Live webinar series and co-producing a monthly YouTube ‘WBA Compliance Corner’ video series. Through the free program, the WBA Legal Team has reached over 1,000 bankers throughout Wisconsin by providing members with updates on state and federal banking issues and regulations. The popularity of the program has led to bankers reaching out to Birrenkott providing him with topics they would like him to discuss in upcoming programs. Most recently, Birrenkott created a Legal Process Video Series — the online hub contains 13 modules, with over two hours of video material — which will be an invaluable resource for frontline and operational talent in the industry. Birrenkott and the WBA Legal Team also developed a new In-House Legal Training program offering a tailored opportunity for WBA members to receive the compliance-related staff training they need.

Birrenkott’s colleagues and the WBA membership alike have found great value in Scott’s expertise, the resources he creates, and his ability to drive the banking industry and association profession forward. Birrenkott and WBA would like to thank WSAE for the recognition and for its valued support of association professionals across the state. Congratulations to all of the WSAE Excellence in Professional Services award recipients!