2026 Alumni Award Winner Michael Durant on Showing Up for One Another, Opening Doors, and Walking Through Them with Intention

At NAF Next 2026, Michael Durant, a 2007 graduate of NAF’s Academy of Finance, received a NAF Alumni Award.

Remarks by Michael Durant:

Thank you very much. I am deeply honored to be recognized tonight, grateful to the NAF network, and extend congratulations to my fellow honorees.

Before NAF, I had drive, but not direction. In the tenth grade when I discovered NAF, I did not have a five-year plan. Working at a fast food chain after school, I wasn’t sure what opportunity looked like, but I was listening closely for when it came knocking.

One afternoon, I heard some older students from the Academy of Finance talking about where they’d been that summer — the offices they’d worked in, the professionals they’d sat across from, and the projects they’d been trusted to complete. And something in me just said: I want a piece of that. Get me in that room.

NAF just didn’t just open doors for me; it blew the roof off what I thought was possible. I knew that I liked math and was good at it, but through the Academy of Finance and interning at KPMG, I learned lasting lessons about how to build relationships, how to dress professionally, and the kinds of insights about success you can’t find in a textbook.

I went on to graduate from Baruch College, earn my CPA, and build a career that has taken me in two directions at once — law and accounting. Today, I work in advisory, where my knowledge of tax law helps me advocate for clients who need someone fluent in both ‘languages.’

Like others who will grace this stage tonight, people both within and outside of the NAF network—from my grandmother to my late academy director, Regina Flannery—shaped my future through their guidance and support.

That’s why serving on a NAF advisory board has been so meaningful and why I continue to give back. People often point to the distance between the Bronx and downtown Manhattan, but many of the alumni now serving on the committee were once NAF students themselves—students who proved they were well worth the trip.

And as I spend time with the next generation, I’m often struck by the questions they ask about the future of work and concerns about AI.

I’m fond of saying, “When AI can get out of a chair and hand a client a tissue in comfort, that is when I will be replaceable.” Who you are matters— especially when you show up and demonstrate that you care.

NAF is going to open doors. But a door can only do so much. You have to be the one who decides you belong on the other side of it. The credentials, the connections, the experience — NAF helps you build all of it. The rest is how you carry yourself and follow through for the people who count on you.

This work is not just about what is achieved in a classroom or a program—it’s about the leaders we are becoming in the process, and the impact we carry forward into every space we enter.

So let us continue to show up for one another, to open doors, and walk through them with intention.

Thank you.