Dravid H. Murdock is Chairman and major shareholder of Dole Food Company, Inc., (NYSE) , a Fortune 500 company, and Chairman, CEO and owner of Castle & Cooke, Inc, a private company.
Dole Food Company, Inc. is the world’s largest producer and marketer of high-quality fresh fruit and fresh vegetables. Dole markets a growing line of packaged and frozen foods and is a produce industry leader in nutrition education and research. Castle & Cooke’s business activities include 22 operating entities involved in the development and ownership of real estate, leasing of transportation equipment, operating dry and refrigerated warehouse facilities and manufacture of building materials such as brick, ready mix and rock. His combined companies employ more than 85,000 people in over 90 countries and rank as one of the largest privately controlled entities in America.
Mr. Murdock also owns various manufacturing and processing plants, office, retail, hotels and resorts (including three Four Seasons Hotels in Hawaii and California) and industrial projects throughout the world. Through Flexi-Van Leasing, he is the second largest lessor of chassis in the nation. In the United States, major master-planned residential communities are under development in California, Florida, Hawaii (Hawaii’s largest homebuilder), North Carolina and Arizona.
Mr. Murdock is an advocate of eating healthy to live a longer, more vital life. His 2010 publishing endeavor produced The Dole Nutrition Handbook, What to Eat and How to Live For a Longer, Healthier Life, a compilation of science-based facts from leading scientific and nutrition experts on easily obtainable lifestyle, diet and exercise regimens. Previously he organized the collaborative efforts of experts at Mayo Clinic, University of California, Los Angeles and Dole Food Company, Inc. to write The Encyclopedia of Foods, A Guide to Healthy Nutrition, a 500-page book on a healthier lifestyle through improved nutrition, exercise and disease prevention.
A wellness center was recently built across the street from Dole’s worldwide headquarters in Westlake Village, California. The 769,600 square foot complex includes a Four Seasons Hotel, the California Health & Longevity Institute,a healthy lifestyle teaching center combined with medical facilities able to perform complete diagnostic services, and a television production studio.
Additional developments include the North Carolina Research Campus, near Charlotte, a high-tech life science research center dedicated to the betterment of the world’s health and nutrition. Murdock’s development will corral the research and programs of leading academic circles with eight universities (including Duke, NC State and UNC-Chapel Hill), biotech companies and private enterprise in superb facilities with unparalleled scientific equipment. Mr. Murdock has engaged Duke researchers to conduct the MURDOCK Study which is designed to use advanced technologies to identify genomic linkages within and across diseases and disorders, such as hepatitis C., cardiovascular disease, obesity and osteoarthritis. The study’s goal is to improve the way debilitating diseases are predicted and treated, and lead to changes in medical practice, healthier populations and a textbook of medicine that reflects scientific and clinical advances of the 21st century.
The David H. Murdock Core Laboratory, which opened in 2008, anchors the campus with its 311,000 square feet of lab space and will be accessible to campus occupants. Upon completion, the 350-acre campus will include a new comprehensive mixed-used environment with one million square feet of office and lab space, a city center, 350,000 square feet of retail space, townhomes, apartment and parks.
Mr. Murdock is the majority owner of NovaRx, a bio-pharmaceutical company in San Diego, California dedicated to developing a cure for non-small cell cancer. NovaRx has developed a series of vaccines based on the development and commercialization of novel cell-based therapeutic vaccines for the treatment of cancer. The Company’s lead product candidate Lucanix™ is in final Phase 3 Trials with the FDA and various hospital around the world for the treatment of lung cancer..
Mr. Murdock wants to turn the Hawaiian island of Lana’i, 98 percent of which he privately owns through Castle & Cooke, into a green island through the construction of the fourth largest solar photovoltaic installation in the United States at 1.5 megawatts as well as the development of a large megawatt wind farm to supply power to Lana’i and the City of Honolulu on the island of Oahu, Hawaii. The island of Lana’i is planned to be a showcase of renewable energy, self-reliant and energy self-sustaining by utilizing the natural resources from the sun, wind, sea and land.
Mr. Murdock has been a Regent’s Professor of Creativity in Business at UCLA’s Anderson Graduate School of Management. He is the recipient of an honorary Doctorate of Law degree from Pepperdine University and honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters degrees from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Hawaii Loa College. His hobbies include reading, the arts, poetry, and horticulture. He is a breeder of prized Arabian horses, has an orchid collection consisting of more than 30,000 plants and an avid art and antique furniture collector. He resides in California with residences in New York, Kannapolis, North Carolina and Lana’i, Hawaii. He has a son who is also active in the family business.