College of Business and Entrepreneurship to Celebrate 20th Anniversary of Carl DeSantis Building

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – For more than two decades, Carl DeSantis has been instrumental in moving Nova Southeastern University forward as a highly respected higher education institution when it comes to educating future business leaders and entrepreneurs.

Born in Massachusetts and raised in Florida, DeSantis was a lifelong entrepreneur with a natural flair for business and marketing. He launched Sundown Vitamins in his garage and built it from a mail order company into the world’s largest vitamin manufacturer. The company would later become Rexall Sundown, growing into a Fortune 100 company while revolutionizing the health supplements industry. In 2000, Rexall Sundown was sold for $1.8 billion. DeSantis immediately began to invest in—and pioneer—a series of companies while also continuing to be a passionate philanthropist.

DeSantis was inducted into NSU’s Entrepreneur and Business Hall of Fame in 1998. In 2002, Carl DeSantis pledged a leading gift to the campaign to relocate NSU’s business college from a small off-site space to a 261,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art facility on the NSU Fort Lauderdale/Davie Campus. In January 2004, the Carl DeSantis Building was opened as the home of the H. Wayne Huizenga College of Business and Entrepreneurship (HCBE).

Among the many milestones of the college are:

• Huizenga Business Innovation Academy, which invests more than $300,000 in student businesses
• New and enhanced business majors such as the BSBA in the Business of Health and graduate degrees such as the M.S. in Digital Marketing, M.S. in Sustainable and Digital Finance, M.S. in Professional Practice Management and M.S. in Business Innovation and Agility
• Partnership in a $1 million grant to study health care inequities
• Recent launch of a Center for Case Study Excellence, dedicated to connecting faculty and students with business leaders and entrepreneurs to solve real-world issues
• Soon-to-open trading floor that will give students hands-on experience in conducting research and managing a range of investments starting with a fund that considers Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) risk factors

The H. Wayne Huizenga College of Business and Entrepreneurship community is looking forward to celebrating Carl DeSantis’ legacy and the 20^th anniversary of the Carl DeSantis Building with a private brunch on Saturday, Dec. 16, 2023, at 11 a.m. in the atrium of the building at 3050 Ray Ferrero Jr. Blvd., Fort Lauderdale, FL.

“While Carl DeSantis will not be with us, having passed on in August of this year, he will be here in spirit and we celebrate him with his family,” said Andrew Rosman, Ph.D., dean of the H. Wayne Huizenga College of Business and Entrepreneurship. “We appreciate the transformative effect the Carl DeSantis Building and his entrepreneurial legacy have had on NSU and the students aspiring to become the future business leaders of our community.”

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