Alan E. Kligerman is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of AkPharma Inc. He is also the founder and was Chief Executive Officer of Lactaid Inc., which introduced and marketed lactase enzymes to the U.S., Canadian and worldwide markets. Born in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Alan Kligerman attended schools in Margate and Atlantic City, New Jersey. He studied dairy industry at Cornell University, making him the third generation of his family in the dairy business. The family firm, Kligerman Dairies, operated in Atlantic City from 1919 to 1965.
In 1962 Mr. Kligerman founded SugarLo Company which produced and marketed low-sugar frozen desserts and other food products In 1974 Mr. Kligerman started the business that evolved into Lactaid Inc., which marketed over-the-counter lactase enzyme tablets and dairy-produced lactose-hydrolyzed milk for persons who are lactose intolerant. In 1990 and 1996, Mr. Kligerman licensed, and then sold, the Lactaid brand to McNeil Consumer Products Division of Johnson & Johnson. In every year since 2001, Lactaid Milk has been the largest selling branded milk in the United States.
In 1991 Mr. Kligerman founded AkPharma Inc., to market his invention, the oral use of alpha galactosidase enzyme to make beans, legumes, and a wide variety of similar vegetables more digestible. He obtained U.S. and worldwide patents on these uses, and he created the brand name Beano® for it. The Beano brand and patent rights were sold to Block Drug Company, Inc., now part of Glaxo SmithKline, in 1997.
Starting in 1996 and continuing through the present, AkPharma developed, patented and began marketing Prelief7 brand calcium glycerophosphate, a food acid neutralizer that stops food acid-caused discomfort from acidic foods. Prelief also proved to be of important value in interstitial cystitis, a bladder disease, for which it is the acknowledged best option. Based on its demonstrated cellular effects, AkPharma now engages in extensive clinical studies, research and product development on other internal, respiratory and dermatological uses of calcium glycerophosphate.
Mr. Kligerman has been on the Government Affairs and Public Relations Committees of the Dairy & Food Industry Supply Association. He has also been Treasurer and Board member and has served on various committees of the Calorie Control Council. He has twice appeared before the House Judiciary Subcommittee of the U.S. Congress on food industry matters and has testified before the House on behalf of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. During the Special Food and Drug Hearings in the early 1970's he was one of the founders of the U.S. Council on Special Foods, created to defend the use of sorbitol as a food ingredient.
He was a member of the Advisory Council of Cornell University's Institute of Food Science, 1990-1996. In 1995 he was appointed by President Clinton to the Board for International Food and Agricultural Development, a unit of the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Mr. Kligerman has frequently given talks on the subject of the practical applications of enzymes in food and milk modification to industry, regulatory and professional symposia. He has been a visiting speaker at Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, the Nice (France) University Medical School, Cornell University, The British Milk Marketing Board, Moscow State Academy of Food Industry and the 1993 Prague International Biotechnology Conference. He is contributing author to the books ALactose Digestion@, (Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1981), AMilk Intolerances and Rejection@, (S.Karger, Basel, 1983) and has authored and contributed numerous other articles on various aspects of the development, marketing and legal regulation of special foods. He has numerous patents in food and medical technology and in packaging to his name.
In 1987, Mr. Kligerman/Lactaid Inc. shared the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) Industrial Achievement Award, the highest food technology award in the U.S. given in industry. The award was shared with the Agricultural Research Service of the USDA and was for developing Lactaid. In 1996 the Moscow State Academy of Food Processing conferred an Honorary Doctor of Philosophy degree upon Alan Kligerman for his contributions to their Food Science programs. He has been a member of the American Mensa Society for over 40 years.
In civic matters, Alan Kligerman has been active at numerous levels. He is a past board member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and was active in compelling local craft unions to racially integrate. He was for some years a Democrat County Committeeman and played a major role in upsetting a local Republican/Democrat-collusion political machine in the early 1970's, and acted as temporary County Party Chairman in 1971. He has also been active in non-political public interest litigation, including a suit challenging abuses of ASenatorial Courtesy@ in the selection of Superior Court judges; a successful court action voiding illegal pay increases voted themselves by Atlantic City, NJ City Commissioners in AWalsh Act@ form of government, and a case testing the constitutionality of the 1978 New Jersey Casino Referendum. He was appointed to the New Jersey-Israel Trade Commission by Governor Florio in 1990, re-appointed in 1991, and again in 1995 by Governor Whitman.
AkPharma Inc. and Lactaid Inc. award research and pro bono grants each year to a number of recipients over a wide range, a program which has included college scholarship awards, fellowship stipends, a faculty exchange program between Cornell University and the Moscow State Academy of Food Industry, the Crohn's & Colitis of America Foundation, large grants to a Central American foundation involving nutrition in adults and children, a major grant for a New Jersey digestive disease center, funding of facilities for U.S. center-city social assistance sites, and many others.
His family's ongoing philanthropy is varied and extensive. To coordinate and assure continuity of his contributions to various charities, performing arts entities and organizations, Mr. Kligerman created and serves as Chairman of the Kligerman Foundation, which makes grants for various educational, medical, performing arts and other philanthropic purposes. Among its activities has been the founding of the Institute for Law and Justice, formed to promote improvements in the quality of justice in the New Jersey court system. He is a former Managing Trustee of the Democratic National Committee and a former member of the Democratic Leadership Council and its Progressive Policy Institute Round Table. The Kligerman Family’s philanthropies to a wide variety of causes and beneficiaries are ongoing and significant.
Mr. Kligerman remains active regarding non-political public interest matters; he was for years an active member of Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities, and spoke in Washington, New York and elsewhere on their agenda involving appropriate limits on weaponry expenditures and other armaments issues and was a major financial supporter of it. He is a major contributor to organizations involved in clean indoor air (anti-smoking). He is on the Advisory Board and a major donor to the National Yiddish Book Center, Amherst, MA and is a former board member of the Pennsylvania Ballet.
Mr. Kligerman has been active with local and national offices of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and has traveled on behalf of the ADL to meet with numerous international government leaders in their countries, including Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel, France and Great Britain. He is a major supporter of Americans for Peace Now and has worked actively with this organization on behalf of a peaceful settlement in the Middle East, and has met with Middle East government leaders of fact-finding and peace-seeking missions.
On behalf of his business, Mr. Kligerman has traveled extensively to Asia, Europe and Central and South America. For pleasure, he has spent time during some summers studying literature and science at Oxford and Cambridge in England and Trinity College, Dublin. He reads extensively, gardens and enjoys going to the opera and ballet. He is 79 and has five children and nine grandchildren.
