Alex Voissard, inducted as a Distinguished Business Student into the American College of Bankruptcy, says the field is “not always a death knell” for companies.
As Alex Voissard embarked upon a trip last month to Washington, D.C., he was struck by the arrival of a future he hadn’t seen coming.
When Voissard had enrolled at Northeastern University as a freshman from Philadelphia in 2021, he’d had the vague but promising idea of majoring in finance. Four years later and mere weeks away from graduating, Voissard was now preparing to launch a full-time career in turnaround and restructuring services — which will include cases of bankruptcy.
One last academic milestone remained: This trip to the nation’s capital for his induction as a Distinguished Business Student into the American College of Bankruptcy.
The high honor was reserved for Voissard and 13 fellow students from around the U.S.
“There really aren’t many opportunities for people my age to get into it,” Voissard says of his imminent career in restructuring financial advisory. “It’s funny because most people in my position are looking to go into M&A (mergers and acquisitions) or corporate development. I’m basically doing the opposite — I’m working on the opposite end of the life cycle of a company.”
Despite the negative connotations of bankruptcy, Voissard says he’ll often be focusing on opportunities to help people rebuild rather than deconstruct.
“Before I started working in the field, I did not know much about bankruptcy,” he says. “It’s not so much that a company declares bankruptcy and, therefore, they’re automatically shutting down and everything’s getting sold off.
“That certainly can be the case, depending on the circumstances. But in a classic Chapter 11 (of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code), usually what will happen is there will be some negotiation with the lender to extend the terms or settlement with creditors or something of that nature that extends the life of the business and gives you more runway to turn things around. So it’s not always a death knell.”
It requires creativity.
“It’s kind of the perfect role for me because it combines my interest in accounting and finance,” Voissard says. “You deal with the accounting aspects of understanding the company’s books and having a strong grasp of their operations. But then there’s what is called a ‘13-week cash flow’ that will forecast exactly what the cash balance will be every week throughout the time that a company is undergoing a bankruptcy proceeding. That is key because if you run out of cash, you’re dead in the water. So it requires a good grasp of both concepts.”
Voissard’s academic transformation began with a Northeastern financial and reporting class that convinced him to add accounting to his major. A 2023 co-op in New York with the CPA firm CohnReznick introduced him to the bankruptcy community.
Two years later he was being honored in Washington.
“It meant a lot,” says Voissard, who will join the turnaround and restructuring services practice in a full-time role at BDO in New York after he graduates next month with a degree in business administration finance and accounting. “It was amazing to be connected with so many other students around my age who had similar interests.
“Being able to go to the conferences, learn so much from the speaker panels and meet so many talented professionals — bankruptcy judges, highly accomplished attorneys, consultants, accountants, bankers, you name it. Everyone was there. It was really a great experience.”