Co-CEO, Meijer, Inc.
Hank Meijer, is co-CEO of Meijer, Inc. a regional hypermarket chain with its roots going back to 1934. Meijer, Inc. is one of the largest privately owned companies in the U.S., with 200 stores in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Kentucky. Hank joined the family retail business at the age of 11 as a grocery clerk. After serving as a reporter for a Detroit-area suburban newspaper group, he became editor and later publisher of a weekly newspaper in Plymouth, Michigan. He rejoined Meijer in 1979 as assistant advertising director.
In 1984, he published
Thrifty Years
, a biography of Hendrik Meijer, the company’s founder and his grandfather. His articles on Michigan Senator Arthur Vandenberg have been published in the Michigan Historical Review, and he wrote the entry on the Senator for Simon and Schuster’s Encyclopedia of the United States Congress.
Hank is vice-chairman of the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation. He also serves on the boards of Fifth Third Bank, the Kettering Foundation, and the Food Marketing Institute, and is a member of the President’s Advisory Group of the University of Michigan.