The Short List Named Gold Winner of the 2025 Nonfiction Book Awards!
We’re thrilled to share that The Short List: How to Drive Business Development by Focusing on the People Who Matter Most has been named the Gold Winner of the 2025 Nonfiction Book Awards! A heartfelt thank-you to the Nonfiction Authors Association for this honor, and to our readers for embracing the book’s message and putting it into action in your own lives and work.

Resources from The Short List

Meet the Author:
David Ackert
David is Co-Founder and CEO of Ackert, Inc. and its subsidiary, PipelinePlus. He is a highly regarded business development thought leader. Over the past two decades, David has pioneered revenue acceleration programs for hundreds of professional services firms around the globe.
He is the founder of several technology platforms including the PipelinePlus software suite. His programs are winners of “Your Honor Awards” in both the U.S. and Canada and have been featured in NLJ’s “Technologies on the Rise.” David regularly keynotes at partner retreats and speaks at industry conferences. He also serves as a guest lecturer at USC’s Marshall School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University, and at the UCLA School of Law.
David is the bestselling author of The Short List: How to Drive Business Development by Focusing on the People Who Matter Most, published by Greenleaf. The book is a Gold Winner of the 2025 Nonfiction Book Award. His work has been published and quoted across several business books and media over the years, including the Los Angeles Times, the National Review, the Daily Journal, the Wall Street Journal, Above the Law, Attorney at Work, The Recorder, and the Los Angeles Business Journal. His Market Leaders Podcast has won several JD Supra Reader’s Choice Awards.
David volunteers as a Big Brother with the Big Brothers and Sisters program in Los Angeles. He is also the co-founder of Voices in Harmony, a mentoring organization that has worked with at-risk youth around the globe. He co-produced and appeared in the documentary film, “After Kony: Staging Hope,” chronicling mentoring programs he helped to design and facilitate for former child soldiers in Northern Uganda. The film was used as part of an awareness-raising campaign that raised millions of dollars for health and education in underserved Ugandan communities. David’s charitable work earned the “Difference Maker” award from one of his alma maters, Ithaca College.
David holds a master’s in psychology and is a Fellow at the College of Law Practice Management.