Fuad El-Hibri Wire

By Marjorie Censer

Monday, January 3, 2011

Fuad El-Hibri has lived in all sorts of exotic locales, working for Citicorp in Saudi Arabia, consulting for Booz Allen Hamilton in Indonesia and establishing mobile telecommunications businesses in Russia, Venezuela and El Salvador.

But getting started in his current position as chief executive of Rockville-based pharmaceutical company Emergent BioSolutions took him to a far more mundane location. It was at a public auction in Lansing, Mich., in 1998 that El-Hibri offered a $25 million package of cash and commitments to privatize a government facility that was producing an anthrax vaccine.

Since then, he’s built what is now known as Emergent into a local pharmaceutical company that posted earnings of $31.1 million last year.

El-Hibri took an unusual path into the industry, spending much of his career in telecommunications. Born to a Lebanese father and German mother, he split his childhood between Lebanon and Germany before attending Stanford University. El-Hibri quickly moved on to a graduate degree, heading to Yale’s business school.

Though he wanted to start his own business, El-Hibri wanted to gain experience first. After marrying, he and his wife moved to Saudi Arabia so El-Hibri could work for Citicorp. After several years, he moved to consulting giant Booz Allen Hamilton and spent about three years in Jakarta, Indonesia. In one instance, he helped a state-owned petroleum company in Malaysia open up mini-convenience stores alongside its gas stations.

By the late 1980s, El-Hibri was ready to return to the United States, where he opened his own Potomac-based consulting firm. He quickly began working with the Moscow City Telephone Network and helped the company build and implement a mobile telecommunications network that’s still in use today. Partnering with his father — who had worked in telecommunications — El-Hibri eventually sold his interest in the firm and reinvested in a Venezuelan mobile network. He repeated the work in El Salvador.

What made El-Hibri different from other entrepreneurs was his interest in not just making money but also integrating the business into the local economy, said Brian Kim, whose company invested with El-Hibri in both his Venezuelan and El Salvadoran enterprises.

“He had a real sense that the company had [to do] something else — other than creating value for its shareholders,” Kim said. “He took a very local approach.”

Not long after, El-Hibri got involved with a business venture to sell $50 million worth of anthrax vaccine to the Saudi Arabian government, which was worried about its troops. He immediately took an interest in the field, and, after leading a management buyout of a biotechnology firm in Britain, El-Hibri set out to purchase the only facility producing a Food and Drug Administration-licensed anthrax vaccine in the United States.

He headed to Lansing, where the governor had announced the state would privatize its facility, which also had a licensed rabies vaccine, among others. El-Hibri and his partners submitted the winning bid and began renovating the facility, which was relicensed in 2001.

Emergent, which has its corporate headquarters in Rockville, soon added locations, which now extend from Seattle to Munich to Singapore. Best known for its anthrax vaccine, for which it received in July a contract worth up to $107 million, Emergent is also working on a pandemic flu vaccine and a tuberculosis vaccine.

The most recent contract, from the Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, is meant to ready the vaccine for large-scale manufacture.

But El-Hibri doesn’t plan to end his career with pharmaceuticals and said he’d next like to work in the environmental field. (In 2001, El-Hibri launched the El-Hibri Charitable Foundation, which focuses on interfaith dialogue and peace education.)

Roberto Smith-Perera, a former minister of transport and communications in Venezuela who partnered with El-Hibri on both the Venezuelan and El Salvadoran cellular businesses, credited El-Hibri’s geographically and culturally diverse background with teaching him how to handle virtually any kind of business.

He’s the kind of person “that specializes in not . . . being a specialist,” said Smith-Perera. “He’s the ultimate project developer.”

Reprinted from the January 3, 2011 edition of  The Washington Post

August  17,  2010  — The El-Hibri Charitable Foundation announced today that prominent peace educator, nationally renowned columnist and accomplished author Colman McCarthy has been selected as the recipient of the  2010 El-Hibri Peace Education Prize. The Prize, which carries a monetary award of  $15,000, is given annually by the foundation to honor an individual or organization that has made a significant contribution to the field of peace education. McCarthy’s selection was made by a committee of peace education experts chaired by Dr. Mubarak Awad, President of Nonviolence International.

“Colman McCarthy has dedicated his life to teaching young people the principles of peaceful conflict resolution,” noted Robert Buchanan, president of the El-Hibri Charitable Foundation. “His personal commitment and example, combined with his access to national media, have inspired countless individuals to incorporate the values of peace and nonviolence in their personal and professional lives. The El-Hibri Charitable Foundation is pleased to recognize Colman McCarthy for his tireless efforts on behalf of peace education.”

McCarthy was a columnist with The Washington Post from  1969 to 1997. He also wrote for The New Yorker, The Nation, and The Atlantic, among other publications, and has been a frequent guest on C-SPAN. In addition to his career in journalism, McCarthy has been teaching courses on nonviolence and peace studies for nearly thirty years at Washington, D.C. area schools, universities, and student leadership programs. In 1985, he founded and continues to lead the Center for Teaching Peace, a non-profit organization that works with schools and individuals around the world to initiate and expand academic programs in peace education.

McCarthy’s publications include “I’d Rather Teach Peace”, “All of One Peace” and “At Rest with the Animals”.He is also the editor of two anthologies of peace essays that are used as course texts in high schools and colleges:  “Solutions to Violence” and  “Strength Through Peace”.

The  2010 El-Hibri Peace Education Prize will be awarded to Colman McCarthy at a ceremony to be held at 6:30 p.m. on September 25th at the El-Hibri Charitable Foundation’s Washington, D.C. headquarters.

The El-Hibri Charitable Foundation is a  501(c)(3) non-profit private foundation founded in 2001 and led by Fuad El-Hibri, Chairman of the Board of Trustees.. The foundation seeks to build a better world by encouraging peace education, interfaith dialogue, humanitarian aid and social justice.The El-Hibri Peace Education Prize was initiated in  2007. Past Laureates include Abdul Aziz Said, founder of the Center for Global Peace at American University; Scott Kennedy, peace activist and co-founder of the Resource Center for Nonviolence; and Mary E. King,international educator,author and policy advisor.

For further information, visit http://www.elhibriprize.org

The Prince Alwaleed Bin Talaal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding and The Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre published its first edition in what promises to be an annual series of insight into the movers and shakers of the Muslim world. Entitled The 500 Most Influential Muslims 2009, the book categorizes Muslims’ influential capacities into 15 categories: scholarly , political, administrative, lineage, preachers, women, youth, philanthropy, development, science and technology, arts and culture, Qu’ran reciters, media, radicals, international Islamic networks and issues of the day. As part of an ongoing series each week those receiving mention in North America will be highlighted. This week those who seem to have influence in Science and Technology will be highlighted. In this category, there are four people honored living in the United States.

Mohamad Chakaki is a founding member of Green Muslims, a Washington, D.C. group that seeks to relate sustainable environmental policy to faith. He works on projects in the US and the Middle East.

Fuad El Hibri is the CEO of Emergent BioSolutions, Inc. BioSolutions is a multinational bio-pharmaceutical company that is the sole-holder of the FDA-approved anthrax vaccine. He is also Chairman of the East West Resources Corporation and Chairman and Treasurer of the El Hibri Charitable Foundation.

Dr. Mehmet Oz is a cardiothoracic surgeon recently named one of the sexiest men alive for 2009. A frequent visitor of the Oprah Winfrey show and now host of his own show, he is a professor at Columbia University and leads numerous charities and organizations. He has authored several books on personal health.

Ahmed Zewail is the recipient of the 1999 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his research on femotochemistry. He is the Linus Pauling Professor at the California Institute for Technology and was recently asked to serve at President Obama’s invitation as an adviser to the Presidential Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

For more info: IBSN: 2009-9-4078

Source :
http://www.examiner.com/x-26018-SE-Michigan-Islamic-Examiner~y2009m12d27-500-Most-Influential-Muslims-Science-and-Technology?cid=edition-rss-Detroit

WASHINGTON, D.C. – R. Scott Kennedy, former mayor of Santa Cruz and co-founder of the city’s Resource Center for Nonviolence, was presented with the 2008 El-Hibri Peace Education Prize. This prize, including a check for $10,000, is a joint effort between Nonviolence International, American University and the El-Hibri family.

Nancy El-Hibri presented Kennedy the prize honoring his service as a “peace educator and activist of extraordinary impact.” The award presentation ceremony highlighted his central role in “establishing and promoting the now cottage industry of educational delegations for peace to Central America and the Middle East.”

Congressman Sam Farr (D-Carmel), entered a congratulatory statement in the Congressional Record paying tribute to Kennedy.

“It is with great pleasure that I call attention to Dr. Scott Kennedy’s work to bring peace to the world over the course of his lifetime,” Rep. Farr wrote. “He has been a Peace Educator for 40 years and was instrumental in pioneering educational delegations to conflict zones, now a widely practiced form of peace education.”

During the October 4 award ceremony, Kennedy remarked, “Peace education in the classroom is valuable, yet needs to be complemented with pragmatic, hands-on efforts in our communities to make peace and justice a living reality.” He expressed deep appreciation for the many colleagues at the Resource Center for Nonviolence as well as the citizens of Santa Cruz for their tremendous support and inspiration.

Mr. Fuad El-Hibri, who established the El-Hibri Peace Education Prize, noted that he and the El-Hibri Charitable Foundation will continue to support the prize and its growth each year in an effort to highlight the importance of peace education, and to support people who are working for a just, peaceful and healthy planet.

Kennedy is co-founder of Witness for Peace, the Resource Center for Nonviolence and Interfaith Peacebuilders, which has sent educational around the world to countries whose people suffer from conflict, lack of educational opportunities and social injustice.

Source : : http://www.farr.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=442