Fuad El-Hibri

El-Hibri died on April 23 2022 at the age of 64, just weeks after stepping down as the chairman of Emergent’s board. El-Hibri was born in Hildesheim, Germany, grew up in both Lebanon and Germany, and graduated from Stanford University in 1980 with an economics degree. After getting another degree from Yale, he started working in the telecommunications industry. After he started Emergent — then called BioPort — in 1998, the company turned a profit within just four years of existence, El-Hibri was Emergent’s CEO for 14 years, and took the company public in 2006. When he stepped down as CEO, he stayed on as the board chairman for the next 10 years, until he announced at the start of 2022 that he’d retire on April 1.