By Jay Sorgi • Posted August 18, 2026

Michelle Durham’s career has been all about telling stories.

God now is calling the Philadelphia radio veteran to help young women write their story in a setting she always knew would be a place to thrive.

The longtime afternoon anchor at heritage radio station KYW Newsradio and behind-the-scenes advocate for Catholic schools sees the Lord’s handiwork in helping her find her new vocation.

She will work to enrich students’ experiences outside the classroom through the Klarich Center for Academic Excellence at Little Flower High School in North Philadelphia’s Hunting Park neighborhood.

“I am so blessed,” said Durham, a member of St. Anthony of Padua Parish in Ambler. “God works in mysterious ways and He has a plan. He has a plan for all of us, and His plan is better than any plan I could have dreamed up.”

The Klarich Center’s goal is to create hands-on learning, problem solving, mentorship and connections to the working world. It’s designed to help students gain confidence and real-life skills, better understand their passion and vocation, and play an early role in equipping them professionally for that calling.

Durham will also teach the school’s freshman seminar, which is designed to help young women become leaders in and out of the classroom, overcoming the fear that can arise when new students start in an unfamiliar school their freshman year.

“It’s just so amazing to just be able to melt away that initial stress for them and then guide them toward becoming leaders,” she said.

“We talk about it in theory, but as the semester builds, they’re actually going to put it in practice because that’s what the Lord wants. He wants us to take things and put them into practice in our daily life.”

Durham anchored and reported news for 19 years at KYW Newsradio, when she got to present the deeper human story of everyone from survivors of natural disasters to top political figures and all those who move and shape Philadelphia.

She brings that Rolodex of resources and connections as big as the Delaware Valley to Little Flower.

“I will be tapping into all of the contacts and bringing them all to Little Flower, and I have some amazing guests lined up already,” Durham said. “Not only are they amazing people who are going to enrich the girls’ lives, but they’re also going to impart some valuable life lessons.”

She began that process far before Little Flower ever chose her for the Klarich Center. Last October she served as the school’s first Women in Leadership speaker for 2025-26, with all the students seeing her speak in their auditorium.

“When I walked into Little Flower, there was just something so special about the school. I just couldn’t get it out of my mind,” she said.

“The president, Kristie Dugan, and the principal were not looking at me. They were looking at the girls. They said to me (afterward), ‘You had their attention the entire time.’”

The talk certainly touched on her professional career, but her message about trusting in God was what remained as her prime point for the young women.

Durham was “able to talk to them about my experience, remembering to lean on their faith, remembering to take your faith with you when you walk out the door,” she said.

“If they don’t remember anything else about my speech, my various adventures and things that I’ve done, if they only take that with them, then the speech will be successful.”

Durham brings plenty of her own big adventures to her new role at Little Flower. She’s a former firefighter, someone who is professionally trained to make a way out of no way, like the challenge she undertook to bring 5,000 cheesesteaks to sailors on the USS Enterprise in the Persian Gulf.

Durham said she brought her faith with her.

“I said to them, ‘I want to bring something for my shipmates.’ They said, ‘You can’t.’ Well, don’t tell a girl from Northeast Philly that she can’t do something. That’s a no-no,” Durham said.

“I said to them, ‘Well, what do you mean I can’t?’ I don’t do can’t.”

She brought steak, rolls, cheese, Tastykakes and 3,000 Philly sports T-shirts onto the ship.

“What I want my students to understand is that the only limitation that you have in life is the limitation that you put on yourself,” she said.

That attitude is also helping the Nazareth Academy High School alumna overcome her own challenge of pivoting careers, where she’ll lean on her new leader Dugan, whom she calls a “powerhouse,” and on her principal Eric Stonesifer as she learns more about educating young people.

“I love to learn. Life is about learning,” she said. “While I’m teaching, I’m also learning.”