Get Involved
Advising Founders & Sponsors Advisory Board Student Startups Awards & Scholarships Staff
Eugene Applebaum
Arbor Investments Group

Mr. Applebaum is the President of the Arbor Investments Group, based in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, which oversees his real estate and financial ventures. He founded the company after CVS, Inc., acquired Arbor Drugs in April 1998. He sits on the board of directors of Rhode Island-based CVS, a “Fortune 100” corporation and North America’s largest drugstore chain.

A graduate of the Wayne State University College of Pharmacy & Health Professions, Mr. Applebaum launched his first store, Civic Drugs, in Dearborn, Michigan, in 1963. In 1974, he formed Arbor Drugs by bringing together six drugstores in the metropolitan Detroit area. He executed Arbor’s 35-year growth strategy by attracting and retaining an outstanding team. In recognition of the company’s noteworthy achievements and his career as a health care visionary, Applebaum was inducted into the Retail Hall of Honors by Drug Store News in 1998. Also, Arbor was named the 1995 Drug Store News Regional Chain of the Year, the second time in six years. Applebaum was named “1995 CEO of the Year” by Financial World Magazine.

In addition to his business endeavors, Applebaum is recognized for his humanitarian and philanthropic work. In 1998, he contributed the largest individual gift in the history of Wayne State University through his major financial donation toward the construction of a new home for the university’s College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences. Also in 1998, his alma mater granted him an honorary Doctorate of Law degree. In September 2001, Wayne State University Board of Governors renamed the college in honor of Applebaum’s philanthropic work at WSU, which includes the Chairmanship of the University Foundation Board. The school is now known as the Eugene Applebaum College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences. In addition to his gift to Wayne State, he established the Eugene Applebaum Professorship Chair for Entrepreneurial Studies at the University of Michigan Business School.

In 1999, Applebaum and his wife Marcia announced the largest capital gift in the history of Metro Detroit’s Jewish community through the Jewish Federation’s Millennium Campaign for Detroit’s Jewish Future. Eugene Applebaum serves on the Board of Governors of the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit.

Also in 1999, Applebaum co-founded the Hermelin Brain Tumor Center in the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit. He is the co-founder of the Applebaum-Hermelin-Tauber Child Development Center in Israel; formed the Eugene and Marcia Applebaum Beth Hayeled Building and Jewish Parenting Center at Congregation Shaarey Zedek; and established the Eugene and Marcia Applebaum Professorial Chair at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. Beaumont Hospital, in Royal Oak, Michigan, opened the Marcia & Eugene Applebaum Surgical Learning Center in May 2006.

The Applebaums have provided the Mayo Clinic with several multi-million dollar gifts over the years. A seminal gift created the Mayo Clinic Eugene and Marcia Applebaum Fund for Translational Research in Neuroscience Therapeutics. In October 2006, in recognition of their generosity, the eighth floor of the Gonda Building at the Mayo Clinic Rochester, Minnesota, was named The Mayo Clinic Eugene and Marcia Applebaum Neuroscience Center.

Applebaum also serves as a member of the Board of Directors and Board of Governors for the Comprehensive Cancer Center and Chairman of the Endowment Board of the Karmanos Cancer Institute. He is currently a member of the Board of Directors of the American Friends of Israel Museum and the Board of Trustees of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, Michigan Chapter. The Applebaums are also donors to the Michigan Opera Theatre, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra Hall and the Detroit Institute of Arts.




Michigan Business School