Husband Eric C. Jirgens
Queer Places:
Phillips Exeter Academy, 20 Main St, Exeter, NH 03833
University of Michigan, 1230 Murfin Ave, Ann Arbor, MI 48109
Harvard University (Ivy League), 2 Kirkland St, Cambridge, MA 02138
834 Southfield Rd, Birmingham, MI 48009
Allan Dana Gilmour (born June 17, 1934) served as an advocate for numerous businesses, nonprofit organizations and universities. In 2002, Gilmour publicly came out as gay in an interview with a Detroit LGBTQ publication. When Gilmour returned to Ford later in 2002, he became one of the few openly gay executives at a major U.S. corporation. In 2015, Gilmour married Eric
C. Jirgens (born December, 1962); they live in Birmingham, MI where they run a philanthropic foundation serving LGBTQ-focused nonprofits.
Allan Dana Gilmour grew up on a dairy farm in a small Vermont town,
Barnet. In 1952 he graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy, where Jay Rockefeller was his roommate, and then went on to receive his B.A. degree from Harvard
in 1956 and his M.B.A. from the University of Michigan in 1959. He spent most of his career as an executive at Ford Motor Company,
which he joined in 1960 as a financial analyst and from which he retired in 1995 and later in 2005. His career spanned four decades with Ford, where he held a variety of senior management positions including Vice Chairman, Chief Financial Officer, President of Ford Automotive Group, and President of Ford Motor Credit. He has served on various corporate boards including DTE Energy Company, Ford Motor Company, US West, MediaOne Group, Prudential Financial, Dow Chemical, Whirlpool. Universal Technical Institute and Tower International.
Allan Gilmour with his husband, Eric Jirgens in their Birmingham home. Photo Eve Kucharski
Gilmour became president of Wayne State University in 2011 and served the campus and surrounding communities. His dedication to excellence and worthy causes is evident in his work. He has contributed his expertise to serve on the nonprofit boards of the Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan, Henry Ford Health System, Business Leaders for Michigan, Detroit Regional Chamber, Downtown Detroit Partnership, Detroit Zoological Society, Citizens Research
Council and the Detroit Institute of Arts. His service also extends as an advocate for the LGBTQ community and supporting various LGBTQ endeavors. His philanthropic efforts are vast. He was co-chair of the fund-raising campaign at the University of Michigan that resulted in total gifts to the university of $1.4 billion, he then served as honorary co-chair on a second campaign that exceeded $3 billion. He helped found the HOPE Fund, a supporting organization of the Community
Foundation that assists organizations that serve LGBTQ communities. He also created the Gilmour-Jirgens Fund in 1995, personally donating $4 million.
He has received many awards through the years including the Distinguished Service Citation Award from the Automotive Hall of Fame in 2007; the Detroit Free Press Neal Shine Award in 2012 for exemplary regional leadership; the John Phillips Award from Phillips Exeter Academy in 2018 for his contributions to the welfare of community, country, and humanity and he was named Michiganian of the Year in 2011. He was also honored in 2019 by the Ford GLOBE and Detroit LGBT Chamber of Commerce with the inaugural Allan D. Gilmour Award for Outstanding Leadership in Inclusion for his decades of contributions to the LGBTQ community in both business and philanthropy.
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