Howard S. Dvorkin

Born in 1964 in Toms River, New Jersey, Howard Dvorkin grew up in a blue- collar, ethnic neighborhood. “It was a little rough,” he says. “I could usually count on someone picking a fight with me every time I left my house. But overall, I had a terrific childhood.”

Dvorkin’s father owned a plumbing supply store with his brother. From the time he was 10, Dvorkin worked weekends and school vacations at the store. “We were a tight family,” he says. “At night, we’d sit around the dinner table and talk about politics and world events, and my father would share stories about what was going on in his business. I didn’t know it at the time, but he was grooming me to one day take over the store.”

A self-described day-dreamer, Dvorkin didn’t care about school in his early years, but he saw himself as an entrepreneur. “I liked to sell things,” he says. “I wasn’t into sports, but I would sell lemonade to the baseball team on their way home from practice. I sold greeting cards door to door and I had a large paper route. One year, my sister and I made candles and sold them at the flea market. In the wintertime, I hired kids to help me shovel snow from driveways and then reinvested the money I earned into getting a snow blower and reducing my labor costs. I always found ways to make money.”

A week before his bar mitzva, when Dvorkin was 13, his father stumbled into his bedroom and fell to the floor. “He died in my arms from a massive heart attack. My father was a wonderful person and a great role model. His death was very difficult for me.”

Within a few days of his father’s passing, Dvorkin’s uncle made a drastically undervalued offer to his mother for her part of the plumbing business. “My mother fought it, but it took years to get a legal settlement,” says Dvorkin. “They even told me not to show up for work any longer. In the meantime, we were plunged into a financial crisis.”

Dvorkin was filled with rage following his father’s death. Not only did he lose a parent, but he also lost his relationship with his uncle—a person he was always told to trust. “In those days, no one offered me any mental therapy,” he says. “Basically, I was told to just get on with my life. But I had so much anger inside me and I didn’t know what to do with it. That’s when I began hanging out with troublemakers.”

For the next few years, Dvorkin continued spending time with a rough crowd. In high school, he joined the football team, which helped with some of his anger issues. One night, the hijinks with his friends got out of hand. As a result, Dvorkin was arrested and his sister had to bail him out. “That night, I looked at myself in the mirror and didn’t like what I saw,” he says. “I decided to make an immediate change. I got new friends and began applying myself to my studies. I went from the bottom of my class to the top 10 percent. Throughout all this turmoil in my teen years, my mother was the most important person in my life. She never stopped believing in me. She was my mother, my father, my friend, and my biggest cheerleader. She was very smart and read four newspapers a day. She was tough, and I wanted her to be proud of me.”

By working throughout his high school years, Dvorkin had some savings for college. He applied to West Virginia University, as it was the least expensive school he could find. A year later, after a talk with his mother, he transferred to American University in Washington, D.C. “That school opened my eyes to a whole new world,” he says. “The level of sophistication was higher than anything I had ever experienced. I majored in accounting because I thought it would expose me to a number of different businesses.”

After completing his BS degree in 1986, Dvorkin achieved his MBA from the University of Miami in Florida. Looking back, he says, “I have always valued the higher education I got, and don’t believe I would be where I am today without it.”

Dvorkin’s first job was in the tax department of the accounting firm of Laventhol and Horvath in Washington, D.C. He rose through the ranks quickly and was promoted to the organization’s office in Palm Beach. Within days of taking his position, however, the firm was shut down and Arthur Andersen took over. Everyone, except Dvorkin and another young CPA, were fired.

By 1993, after working largely in debt consolidation, Dvorkin felt it was time to go out on his own. He founded Consolidated Credit from his kitchen table, and then graduated to a converted janitorial closet in an old office building. He built the company into the world’s largest credit counseling agency.

In 2013, Dvorkin founded Debt.com, a Florida-based company that is a one-stop shop for solving personal debt. The combined firms have helped 13 million families get out of debt. “I’m very proud of that,” he says. “When I teach people how to take charge of their finances, it changes their lives. In this country, we don’t formally teach personal finance. But I believe all young people should understand finances before they become adults.”

A serial entrepreneur, Dvorkin has founded more than a dozen companies, many in the financial services sector, including: Start Fresh Today, a software platform for pre-filing bankruptcy counseling and post-filing debtor education; and Power Wallet, an online software platform that allows clients to create monthly budgets and monitor spending. Dvorkin is also the author of two books: Credit Hell: How To Dig Out of Debt and Power Up: Taking Charge of Your Financial Destiny . In all of his businesses, Dvorkin is committed to innovation and financial empowerment.

Dvorkin credits much of his success to his resilience and acceptance of personal responsibility. When he was in his early 30s, newly married and starting his first business, his beloved older sister died, leaving him to raise her 12-year-old son, Todd. “It was a challenging time for our family,” he says, “but it was totally the right thing to do.”

Dvorkin believes his life story is an example of abundant opportunities available for all in America. “If a kid from the swamps of Jersey can found a business that helps millions of people, I call that the American dream. But my success wasn’t all luck. In fact, I think success is mostly accomplished through hard work. Luck was just a byproduct of hard work.”

When addressing young people who have faced challenges, he says, “Those kids are better prepared for adulthood than 90 percent of their peers. They know how to keep going. You have two ways of looking at adversity: as a victim or as a person who keeps moving forward. Use adversity to fuel future success.”

Dvorkin adds, “We all have failures at some point in our lives. We all fall down, but it’s important to be the one that falls forward, rather than backward. Learn from your mistakes and then pick up yourself and keep moving forward—always forward.”

An avid philanthropist, Dvorkin learned at an early age to give back. “My sister and I collected for muscular dystrophy every year when we were kids. We did a lot of fundraising walks for different causes. I think those experiences made us more a part of our community. Today, my support has three pillars: mental health, education, and feeding the hungry.”

Dvorkin founded Parkland Cares, which was established after the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting to support mental health counseling. “I’m very proud that this effort. We supported 14 mental health organizations and funded more than 44,000 hours of mental health counseling for the victims of this terrible mass shooting, which took place in my hometown of Parkland, Florida,” Dvorkin says.

When asked about his Horatio Alger Award, Dvorkin says, “It is the most meaningful award and highest honor I have ever received. I am excited to be a part of the scholarship programs. Helping others—especially with education— is very important to me. I know I wouldn’t be where I am today without the college education I received, but I have also benefitted greatly from my lifelong quest to be a constant learner.”