About 20 years ago, attorney Tim Lappen fell in with a group of motorcycle enthusiasts who went on long rides together. Some of them were executives at BMW, and he has kept up the relationship – which means he now gets to lease cars before they hit the market.
His newest toy is BMW’s electric car, the ActiveE. Unlike the previous electric car he was leasing from BMW, the new one has even got a built-in app that helps him find the nearest charging station.
The 64-year-old car fanatic, who has driven Lamborghinis, Aston Martins and other exotics, said the ActiveE can be the speediest way to make his 20-mile commute from Manhattan Beach to the Century City office of Jeffer Mangels Butler & Mitchell LLP.
“I’m driving in the carpool lane with an alternative energy sticker and will go right by the Bugatti Veyron that’ll be going a mile an hour,” he said.
Cutting Role
Dr. Andrew Ordon, a plastic surgeon who practices in Beverly Hills and Rancho Mirage, recently began hosting a web series called “Aesthetic TV” that examines new plastic surgery procedures and the like.
But he didn’t land the gig by chance. Ordon, 61, has been courting the camera since he was fresh out of USC medical school. While in New York for training in the 1980s, he hired a publicist to help him land on-camera interviews as an expert for shows such as “20/20.”
He caught a break a few years ago when he met TV personality Dr. Phil McGraw, who was looking to cast a panel for his medical talk show, “The Doctors.” McGraw selected Ordon to lead the show’s discussions on plastic surgery. The show is still airing.
But Ordon thinks he has some acting chops to show on scripted TV, too.
“I always did want a cameo appearance on ‘Nip/Tuck,’” he said of the FX series that ended a couple of years ago. “If there was an opportunity, I wouldn’t say no.”
Ethical Success
Finally, Michael Josephson can enjoy a moral victory.
His Josephson Institute of Ethics is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. When he started the organization as a non-profit consulting firm in 1987, many people couldn’t understand why the world needed an expert on ethics.
“They mocked it, they said I was out of my mind,” Josephson told the Business Journal. “But I hung in there until the world caught up with me.”
After working as an attorney and law professor, Josephson started a legal publishing company, which he eventually sold for $10 million in 1985. He was in his early 40s and had to figure out what to do with the rest of his life. He decided to teach ethics because he loved the subject.
Since then, he has consulted for hundreds of companies and organizations, including Avery Denison, Neutrogena and the Los Angeles Police Department.
The most touching anniversary gift for Josephson occurred recently at a dinner for people whose lives were changed by hearing his commentaries on the radio.
Now 69, Josephson wants to keep the conversation about ethics going for another quarter-century.
“What I’ve learned is you have to keep moving forward and the opportunities keep coming,” he said. “You’ve just got to stay in the game.”
Staff reporters Alfred Lee, Jonathan Polakoff and Joel Russell contributed to this column. Page 3 is compiled by Editor Charles Crumpley. He can be reached at [email protected].
