Cohen’s legacy includes launching and leading four pharmaceutical companies and testifying before Congress to expose corruption in the Food and Drug Administration. Most recently, he served as the founding CEO and chairman of Summit BioSciences Inc., a Lexington, Kentucky-based pharmaceutical company that develops and manufactures nasal spray medicines.

“[He] was an advocate for Fordham University since graduating from the College of Pharmacy, and always credited the experience and education he received at Fordham as the building block for his future business endeavors,” Cohen’s son Richard wrote in an email.

Although Fordham’s College of Pharmacy closed in 1972, Cohen remained close to his alma mater, particularly the Gabelli School of Business. After serving on the University’s Board of Trustees from 2000 to 2004, he became a trustee fellow. He and his wife, Nadia, have also been generous benefactors of Fordham, supporting scholarship funds for students and research at the Graduate School of Social Service’s Ravazzin Center on Aging and Intergenerational Studies, among other initiatives.

In 1997, Fordham awarded Cohen an honorary Doctor of Science degree during the University’s annual commencement ceremony. Sharon Smith, Ph.D., then dean of the University’s undergraduate business school, read the citation.

“One of the enduring challenges facing American society is the development of a system of health care that is both medically and economically sound and responds to the needs of all of our citizens,” Smith said. “Mr. Cohen’s success in providing generic drugs to the public has set a standard for other business leaders to emulate.”

To that end, Cohen made a significant impact on the global pharmaceutical industry. He worked with the U.S. Agency for International Development and Egypt’s Ministry of Health to expand the use and availability of generic drugs, and was invited to Turkey and Mexico to work with industry leaders on maximizing pharmaceutical exports to reach new territories.

Under his leadership, Summit BioSciences achieved annual sales between $1 million and $5 million and expanded its facilities and staff by nearly triple since he founded the company in 2008. In the late 1990s, Cohen founded Intranasal Therapeutics, now known as Ikano Therapeutics, and served as the company’s CEO and chairman. He made his first foray in the industry in 1959, when he co-founded Davis-Edwards Pharmacal Corporation, which became one of the first companies to manufacture and promote multisource drugs.

Another milestone in Cohen’s career was his leadership of Barr Laboratories Inc., a pharmaceutical company he launched in 1970 that traded on the New York Stock Exchange and grew to more than $3 billion in annual sales before the company was acquired by Teva for $7.5 billion in 2008. During his tenure, Forbes magazine named him among the 200 Best Small Companies’ Chief Executives. As CEO of the firm, Cohen testified before Congress to expose several corrupt officials at the FDA who were later found guilty of taking bribes and manipulating the drug approval process.

Cohen was a founding member of the Generic Pharmaceutical Industry Association (the predecessor to the Association for Accessible Medicines) and a founding member and executive board member of the National Association of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers. He also served as chairman of New Concepts for Living, an organization that provides support for people living with developmental disabilities.

After he graduated from Fordham, Cohen earned an M.B.A. from the City College of New York and completed a program in organizational change and marketing management at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. He enjoyed traveling with his wife and had a keen interest in New York City architecture and World War II history.

He is survived by his wife, Nadia; daughter, Andrea Cohen-Lenihan; and three sons, Richard, Steven, and Michael.

—Claire Curry

“We see all of the early, cutting-edge technologies,” says Juelis, a member and co-chair of the life sciences committee at Band of Angels, Silicon Valley’s oldest angel investment group. “In the life science area, particularly now, there’s a lot of redirecting of work towards a COVID cure and diagnostics, as well as digital health technologies that help the hospitals become more efficient and monitor patients at home.”

Juelis cites one of Band of Angels’ portfolio companies that is developing a special respirator used by emergency response crews for whom mouth-to-mouth resuscitation is no longer a viable option due to the spread of the coronavirus. Responders will be able to pump oxygen to people via the device while performing CPR. Based on that technology, Juelis says, the company was quickly able to develop a ventilator system that has been offered to several California hospitals.

“The sciences have continued to develop in all directions,” says Juelis, who majored in chemistry at Fordham before earning his M.B.A. at Columbia and working in finance and operations for both Hoffmann-La Roche and Schering-Plough (now Merck), including stints in Cork, Ireland, and Puerto Rico. “[It] used to be that chemists didn’t really talk to biologists that much. But now all of these disciplines, including computer sciences, have all merged together.”

As an angel investor, Juelis draws on his experiences as a chief financial officer for companies that ultimately developed lifesaving medications. He has also sat on the boards of directors of a number of smaller public companies and tech firms, and he currently serves on the board of El Camino Hospital in Mountain View, California, where he is a member of the finance committee.

Juelis says that Fordham helped lay the foundation for his career, and that’s why he has remained a part of the community, helping students experience a global education and connecting them with career opportunities. In 2011, he set up an endowment for the Global Outreach program that allowed Fordham students to travel to northwest Lithuania to work with the Auksuciai Foundation, where he served as a board member, at its farm and forest center, and to travel to other countries in Eastern Europe, including Ukraine and Romania. Separately, he sponsored two Fordham computer science students with a summer internship in the research division of a public robotics company where he served as a board member. And the former Rams pitcher and team captain is now supporting the University’s baseball program, as well.

“I would always try to talk to the students that wound up getting the scholarships,” Juelis says of his support for Global Outreach. “It was great to hear what their motivations were.”

This year, Juelis was preparing for his 50th Fordham Jubilee when the COVID-19 pandemic put things on hold. He is part of a planning committee for his class and had begun reaching out to some of his classmates, who knew him as “Tucker” from his undergrad days.

“I was beginning to call a lot of my contacts that I’ve seen in the last few years, or maybe not for a long time, just to catch up with everybody and see how they’re doing,” says the Newark, New Jersey, native. He does plan to make the trip to the Bronx next spring, when 2020 Jubilarians will be invited to Rose Hill to celebrate belatedly. But when the Bronx comes to him via baseball, Juelis said he feels conflicted.

“I was a longtime Yankees fan, but being on the West Coast, I root for the Giants and the Oakland A’s [now],” he says. “So when the Yankees come out to play, I always have a hard time deciding who to root for.”

Fordham Five

What are you most passionate about?
Three things. First, entrepreneurship. I enjoy meeting with and mentoring Fordham and Columbia student entrepreneurs [through my work at Band of Angels]. And through the Fordham Foundry and other sources, I speak with some of the student entrepreneurs [at Fordham], a couple of whom have wound up here in the Bay Area and I’ve worked with [them]. Second, volunteering. And third, sports. I’m a sports fan, but mostly I like to participate: skiing, golf, hiking, fitness, and now playing catch with the grandsons.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
My parents and a couple of high school teachers encouraged me to work hard, take risks, try to succeed in a few different areas, and, of course, attend Fordham.

What’s your favorite place in New York City? In the world?
I enjoy walking in midtown Manhattan, seeing what’s new, and ending up at Hurley’s Saloon in the Theater District. The 9/11 Memorial is incredible. I was on my way to a meeting at the World Trade Center on that fateful day, so the memorial is particularly meaningful [to me].

Other favorites: San Francisco; Cork, Ireland, where we lived for three years and got to travel throughout Ireland and much of Western Europe; and Vilnius, Lithuania, a fabulous city with my ancestral connections. It’s one of the least known, most beautiful cities in Europe, with a long important history. Their Jesuit high school and cathedral date back over 400 years despite various purges by the Czars, Nazis, and Soviet Russia.

Name a book that has had a lasting influence on you.
Several books and letters written about the pre- and post-World War II period in Eastern Europe and Russia. At Fordham in the late ’60s and afterwards, we lived with the overhang of the Communist threat. Until recently, many details about the devastating effects of Soviet socialist domination on the local people in the Soviet Republics, like Lithuania, were little known. I’ve gotten to know several people who were child refugees that fled, on a moment’s notice, when the Soviets took over after World War II. Many of their parents, relatives, and friends wound up in Siberia and were never heard from. Even after the Soviet collapse in 1989, many of the same Russian threats still exist today, most recently in Ukraine.

Who is the Fordham grad or professor you admire most?
Father Robert Cloney, our freshman chemistry professor. First-year chemistry was intimidating enough, but Father Cloney was a very kind, inspiring teacher who always made time after class to help students. The alumnus I most admire was Vince Lombardi, Fordham’s most well-known sports figure and NFL legend. A classic New Yorker and Fordham figure: tough, hard-working, successful.