Clark Durant
Clark Durant is President of the New Common School Foundation and Chair and CEO of the Cornerstone Education Group. In 1991, he co-founded the Cornerstone Schools in Detroit. As President of the Michigan State Board of Education in 1994, he led the adoption of a Vision, Philosophy, and Mission statement that strengthened standards, accountability, character formation, and charter school development. In 2022, he founded Notre Dame de Détroit.
Durant previously served as Vice President of Hillsdale College, where he co-founded Imprimis and the Center for Constructive Alternatives. He headed up an agency in Washington for President Reagan and, with a good team, saved a railroad in Michigan at the request of the Transportation Secretary. A Tulane and Notre Dame Law School graduate, he taught in the undergraduate school. For seven years, he represented those who could not afford a lawyer. A Winston Churchill Fellow and Michiganian of the Year, he has received the Millennium Candler Justice Prize, Black Family Development’s Dr. Gerald R. Smith Humanitarian Award, and the Ernst & Young Spirit of Entrepreneurship Award. He briefly served as an officer in the U.S. Army.
He and his wife, Susan, have been married for 52 years. They have four children and seven grandchildren.