Society’s Own Receives AICPA’s Top Honor

Influential accounting advocate and former Society President Stuart Kessler last month received the American Institute of CPAs’ highest award, the Gold Medal for Distinguished Service.

Bestowed to Kessler during the AICPA Council’s fall meeting in New Orleans, the award recognizes the practitioner’s 40-year record of tireless service to the public accounting profession and the professional associations that work to improve it.

“I was absolutely thrilled when they called me, to put it mildly. I knew the people on the awards committee. Many if not all have received the medal before,” Kessler, a proud wearer of the CPA pin, said of the honor. “Getting that recognition from them was awesome.”

A partner with Goldstein Golub Kessler, a CPA firm that has grown from a small New York practice to one of the largest in the U.S., Kessler’s professional bio is an endless list of accomplishments and titles. In addition to serving as NYSSCPA president in 1984-85, he’s also a recipient of the Society’s Distinguished Service Award (1996), and became the first living member to be inducted into the Society’s Hall of Fame in 2002. He currently sits on the Society’s Future of the Profession Oversight and Tax Division Oversight committees.

Kessler served as chairman of the AICPA Board of Directors in 1997-98, and has headed countless Institute committees, including the International Standards Organization (ISO) Technical Committee, of which he currently chairs. During the award presentation, AICPA President Barry Melancon drew special attention to Kessler’s efforts to expand student recruitment and further diversify the profession—work that the AICPA acknowledged with a minority student scholarship in his name.

Kessler is also an active member of the community, serving on the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts Advisory Council and the USO Board of Directors. He was president of the Brooklyn College Accountants Alumni Association and was inducted as a charter member of the college’s Hall of Fame in 1998.