The Heifetz International Music Institute was established by Daniel Heifetz and is based in Ellicott City, Maryland. The institute also holds a six-week long summer festival program to train young musicians,  held at Brewster Academy in New Hampshire.

The founder, violinist Daniel Heifetz, has played with many world-renowned orchestras and has taught master classes as well as university courses. As a young musician, Heifetz was mentored by legendary names such as Henryk Szyerng, Efrem Zimbalist, Jascha Brodsky, and Ivan Galamian.In 1996, Heifetz started the Heifetz Music Institute in an effort to draw in talented young musicians of violin, viola, and cello from all over the world.

The Institute is 501(c)(3) non-profit organization and can be supported through various giving opportunities.  Its daily operations are led by Daniel Heifetz, but it is also guided by an advisory board whose members include local Maryland businessman Fuad el-Hibri.

Information can be found online about the institute, including reviews of past experiences. Violinist.com featured an article about the summer festival held by the Heifetz Institute from the perspective of a talented high school musician.More information about the institute can be found on its Facebook page.

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

The National Health Museum (NHM) is a science-based institution devoted to educating and inspiring Americans to live healthier lives. With an on site museum planned in Atlanta, and a web-based cyber museum, NHM is committed to bringing health science to life with exhibits, programs, and teaching strategies for educators. The web-based cyber museum is a global online network and digital information hub, consisting of an interactive online exhibit of cutting-edge science. Its global conference center and forum will stimulate dialogue between scientists, policy makers, and consumers concerning medical breakthroughs. Along with other leaders in business, science, public service, and medicine, Fuad El-Hibri serves on the NHM Board of Trustees.

NHM’s on-site museum, called The Experience Museum, is expected to be located at Atlanta Centennial Olympic Park. The facility will consist of self-guided multi-dimensional immersive presentations of life, health, and the human body, designed by BRC Imagination Arts. Renowned architect Moshe Safdie is designing the facility.

ROCKVILLE, MD, July 16, 2010 – Emergent BioSolutions Inc. (NYSE:EBS) today held a ribbon cutting ceremony, led by Governor Martin O’Malley and Fuad El-Hibri, Emergent’s chairman and chief executive officer, to mark the formal opening of Emergent Manufacturing Operations Baltimore.  Emergent’s new facility consists of 56,000 square feet of manufacturing and office space, and includes multiple manufacturing suites designed to support clinical and commercial manufacture of the company’s rPA, anthrax monoclonal, and tuberculosis product candidates, among others.

“The Baltimore facility symbolizes Emergent’s continued investment in manufacturing as one of its core competencies and competitive advantages,” said Mr. El-Hibri.  “It is also a testament to Emergent’s commitment to the State of Maryland, where we are proud to be a key contributor to economic development and job growth.”

“Maryland has a reputation of being a haven for thriving life sciences and biotechnology companies, thanks to industry leaders like Emergent BioSolutions,” said Governor O’Malley. “Emergent’s expansion into Baltimore, through the purchase and re-commissioning of this facility, enables significant investment in the biotech infrastructure already in place and ensures that high-paying, highly-skilled jobs are created and remain in Maryland.”

Emergent employs over 680 employees across the globe, with 180 employees located in Maryland, where, aside from the Baltimore manufacturing facility, its corporate headquarters and one of its product development sites are located.  The opening of this new facility could create an additional 120 jobs in the next five years.

“The opening of this new biopharmaceutical facility is good news for three reasons: jobs, jobs and more jobs for Maryland,” said Senator Barbara Mikulski(MD-D). “To keep our state competitive in the global economy, we have to create and support Maryland’s jobs of the future, like the innovative life sciences jobs at Emergent BioSolutions. I’m proud that East Baltimore has been selected to house a facility dedicated to research that will keep Americans healthy and safe.”

   Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley and Fuad El-Hibri

“I’m pleased to welcome Emergent BioSolutions to Baltimore,” said Congressman John Sarbanes (MD-D).  “This manufacturing facility helps Maryland maintain its status as a leader in the bioscience industry and brings more than 100 high paid, high skilled jobs for Marylanders.”

“Baltimore City is excited about Emergent BioSolutions’ decision to invest here, which will create many jobs and contribute a great deal to the Baltimore biotech industry,” Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said.  “I welcome Emergent BioSolutions to Baltimore City and look forward to the company’s growth in one of Baltimore’s key industries.”

The company is currently working on modifying and re-commissioning the facility.  Planned facility modifications will allow for the utilization of disposable manufacturing technology to potentially result in lower capital investments, lower operating costs, and accelerated process development timelines.  The facility previously operated as a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) licensed facility used by an experienced contract manufacturing organization to produce a number of products approved by the FDA and the European Medicines Agency.

About Emergent BioSolutions Inc.

Emergent BioSolutions Inc. is a biopharmaceutical company focused on the development, manufacture and commercialization of vaccines and antibody therapies that assist the body’s immune system to prevent or treat disease. Emergent’s marketed product, BioThrax^® (Anthrax Vaccine Adsorbed), is the only vaccine approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the prevention of anthrax infection.  Emergent’s product pipeline targets infectious diseases and includes programs focused on anthrax, tuberculosis, typhoid, flu and chlamydia. Additional information may be found at www.emergentbiosolutions.com.

Safe Harbor Statement

This press release includes forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Any statements, other than statements of historical fact, including statements regarding our strategy, future operations, future financial position, future revenues, projected costs, prospects, plans and objectives of management, including any potential future securities offering, our expected revenue growth and net earnings for 2010, and any other statements containing the words “believes”, “expects”, “anticipates”, “plans”, “estimates” and similar expressions, are forward-looking statements. There are a number of important factors that could cause the company’s actual results to differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements, including appropriations for BioThrax^® procurement; our ability to obtain new BioThrax^® sales contracts; our plans to pursue label expansions and improvements for BioThrax^®; our plans to expand our manufacturing facilities and capabilities; the rate and degree of market acceptance and clinical utility of our products; the success of our ongoing and planned development programs, preclinical studies and clinical trials; our ability to identify and acquire or in license products and product candidates that satisfy our selection criteria; the potential benefits of our existing collaboration agreements and our ability to enter into selective additional collaboration arrangements; the timing of and our ability to obtain and maintain regulatory approvals for our other product candidates; our commercialization, marketing and manufacturing capabilities and strategy; our estimates regarding expenses, future revenue, capital requirements and needs for additional financing; and other factors identified in the company’s Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2010 and subsequent reports filed with the SEC. The company disclaims any intention or obligation to update any forward-looking statements as a result of developments occurring after the date of this press release.