Larry Tanenbaum, O.C., Hon LLD
Larry Tanenbaum is an accomplished operating executive and private equity investor with a distinguished record of public service to a variety of organizations. In 2007, he was recognized for his philanthropy, business and volunteerism by being appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada, the Country’s highest civilian honour. In June 2012, Mr. Tanenbaum was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws by the University of Toronto. He was inducted into the Ontario Road Builders’ Hall of Fame in 2013 and received the Toronto Board of Trade’s 2015 Region Builders Award. In September 2020 he was awarded the Sports Business Journal Lifetime Achievement Award.
Mr. Tanenbaum is Chairman and CEO of Kilmer Van Nostrand (“Kilmer”), and under his leadership, since 1968, the firm has grown in areas as diverse as heavy construction, road building, aggregates, cable television, electronics manufacturing, private equity, forestry, infrastructure and land development. Today, Kilmer has three primary areas of interest; sports & media, private capital investment and real estate & infrastructure.
He is Chairman of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, Governor and member of the Executive Committees of the NHL, NBA and MLS, and chairs the NBA Board of Governors. He also serves as a member of the Board and Executive Committee of the Hockey Hall of Fame.
His private capital investments include controlling ownership in Coca-Cola Canada Bottling Limited in partnership with Heartland Coca Cola Bottling out of Kansas. Kilmer has been a partner in, and developer of, such high-profile projects as the ONroute Highway Service Centres, Brightwater in Port Credit, the Pan Am Athletes’ Village, and the Province’s West Don Lands rental housing program.
Mr. Tanenbaum is a true difference maker and is philanthropically committed to medical research, brain science and healthy communities. Among his many volunteer roles, he is Co-Founder and Board Member, Tanenbaum Open Science Institute at Montreal Neurological Institute, Chairman of the Research Board for the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute, Vice-Chair, Brain Canada, and a member of the International Board of Right to Play.
In 2022, the Tanenbaum Family Foundation made a significant gift to launch the Tanenbaum Institute for Science in Sport, in co-operation with the University of Toronto and Sinai Health. The Institute is a global centre of excellence for high performance sport science and sport medicine, bringing together the sport science research of the Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education with sports medicine research of U of T’s Temerty Faculty of Medicine, and the clinical and research expertise of the Dovigi Orthopaedic Sports Medicine Clinic and the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute at Sinai Health.
The Tanenbaum Centre for Pharmacogenetics was established at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in 2012. It is an international leader in gene-guided treatment for mental illness. To date more than 10,000 patients and over 3,000 clinicians have completed pharmacogenetics testing through this Centre.
Mr. Tanenbaum has a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics from Cornell University (1968).