Bernard Schneider and Marjorie Schneider Biographies:
Creating a Legacy of Human Excellence

When one considers the meaning of the modern family, so often today our gaze is internal: what we do for one another and mean for one another based on our genetic and cultural sameness. Some families seek to redefine this limited view of their own meaning, however. They are able to see beyond the limits of their own DNA and history to construct more powerful concepts of family through acts of global generosity and enlightenment. These visionaries go out of their way to bring together people from diverse genetic and cultural backgrounds to create better ways of life for all.

Such a family of visionaries has been fostered by Bernard Schneider and Marjorie Schneider. Bernard and Marjorie Schneider were the children of immigrants from the Old World to the New World. Born in ‘The World's Capital,’ New York, they became highly respected professionals and community leaders of the ‘City of Brotherly Love,’ Philadelphia. With this most historic of backdrops, the birthplace of the world's modern notions of equality, freedom and democracy, they have given their all to take such ideals to new levels not only at home, but around the entire world.

Bernard Schneider MD:
Promoter of Health for Humanity

To begin by discussing honors that Dr. Bernard Schneider has received might serve only to distract from the portrait of a man who has spent his life solely in service of others. Having served as Chief of Ophthalmology at major regional hospitals and as President of their Medical Staffs for several terms, Dr. Schneider also holds appointments at all of the leading medical schools in the region, as well. In these capacities, he has led health care reform efforts not only on a regional but on a national level.

Just this month, Bernard Schneider was honored by the Pennsylvania Medical Society for five decades of outstanding service to others and to the medical profession. This award followed closely on the heals of Dr. Schneider’s selection for Methodist Hospital’s most prestigious Norris Award in recognition of Schneider’s extraordinary career and the superlative spectrum of human qualities that have made him not only one of America’s finest clinicians but a leader in the medical profession and of every community he has served for half a century. Bernard Schneider has served as Chief of Ophthalmology at this major regional medical center for decades, and twice served as President of its Medical Staff during some of the most challenging periods of this venerable institution’s history.
While Bernard Schneider is respected far and wide for both his intelligence and his ethics, it is for his benevolent human qualities and sound judgment that he has been most respected of all. If we are to look to the fountainhead of the Schneider dynasty, we have found a worthy source, for these qualities resonate through all that this unique family has accomplished for so many years.

A man devoted foremost to principles of compassion and trustworthiness, Bernard Schneider M.D. has lived a life unceasingly dedicated to mankind's highest ideals and unwaveringly devoted to the health and truth of human existence. It is on this basis above all that Dr. Schneider has been universally revered and honored by his colleagues, patients, family and friends for decade after decade. It is likewise just and inevitable that these forms of health and truth should become the foundation of his Schneider family legacy.

Throughout his career of service to mankind, Dr. Bernard Schneider has been married for more than 57 years to his beloved wife, Marjorie Schneider – another exceptional human being who together with him has forged that legacy from the union of their visions for mankind.

Marjorie Schneider:
Nurturer of the Best Within Us and Among Us

Marjorie Schneider likewise began and has always focused her professional career and personal life on unwavering service to those in need. Marjorie earned her own higher education degrees in education itself, and from the very beginnings of her career has dedicated herself to welcoming, instructing and guiding to success young people who – like her own parents – came to America from other nations. As a school teacher in the great international melting pot that is New York, Marjorie took it upon herself to guide these new generations of Americans the language, customs and culture of their new home, helping them to – like her own family – achieve ‘the American dream.’

In her own home, Marjorie Schneider would herself fulfill that dream by building a family of amazingly successful professionals and – even more importantly – truly enlightened human beings, Marjorie instilled in each member of her family her spirit of sharing and of giving the best of oneself to mankind. Each of Bernard and Marjorie Schneider’s children – Jill Schneider M.D., Susan Schneider M.D., Barbara Schneider Esq., and Kenneth Schneider Esq. – has gone on to a distinguished career dedicated to helping future generations to succeed across all borders and beyond all limits. As doctors and as lawyers, each of them has, in turn, committed herself or himself to improving the lives and fulfilling the dreams of all whom they can reach out to and help to achieve their potential.

Indeed, this has become the passion of each and every member of Bernard Schneider’s and Marjorie Schneider’s family and has proven – thanks to these parents’ untiring guidance and inexhaustible wisdom – to become the greatest talent that each of them has shared with each other and with the world.

Marjorie Schneider, in the meanwhile, focused her energies as well to the greatest beauty that mankind can produce. Following studies at four major universities and for more than four decades, Schneider has developed her second, synergistic career as an internationally recognized fine arts expert and antiquarian – reaching into history to provide inspiration for the future.

For three-quarters of a century, Marjorie Schneider has assisted others to discover and fulfill the best within themselves in ways that perpetuate themselves throughout time and space – and the ripples of this wave of goodness are already multiplying throughout human generations. All can be thankful, who have felt the effects of this work and legacy faithfullly aspiring to achieve the highest heights of mankind’s potential in this world.

Bernard and Marjorie Schneider’s Legacy:
Fostering Mankind's Greatest Vision of Itself

Dr. Bernard Schneider’s and Mrs. Marjorie Schneider's two oldest children, Jill Schneider M.D. and Susan Schneider M.D., both followed in their esteemed father’s footsteps by becoming nationally and internationally respected physicians. Bernard and Marjorie Schneider’s two younger children, Barbara Schneider Esq. and Kenneth Schneider Esq., also followed in their parents' footsteps by serving their communities and their world as respected attorneys serving not only as leaders in their fields but as leaders of new fields directed to achieving human potential.

However, when the progenitors of this dynasty, Bernard Schneider and Marjorie Schneider, graciously agreed to serve as inaugural Directors of a young charity dedicated to helping others fulfill their life dreams, few could have foreseen the global implications that would one day result from this. That very organization, The Apogee Foundation, has now grown to internationally renowned stature for fostering human creative excellence around the world – and the ongoing commitment and combined talents of the entire Schneider family continues to ensure this success.

The name ‘apogee’ means ‘the highest point, the culmination,’ and The Apogee Foundation's vision is guided by the belief in the power of the arts to transcend all boundaries in both embodying and inspiring human excellence. The Apogee Foundation, the Schneiders and everyone with them are dedicated to nothing less than discovering, developing and celebrating humanity's greatest vision of itself on a holistic and global basis. Now, appropriately, The Apogee Foundation has achieved the highest point and culmination of its own field. Less than five years after Apogee’s incorporation, the Foundation has received a major national award recognizing it as the Top Non-Profit Organization following a rigorous national selection process that evaluated more than 10,000 nominees based on best practices and levels of achievement.

Thanks to the purity and power of the Schneiders’ collective vision, and to Bernard Schneider’s and Marjorie Schneider’s stewardship of these aims on the world stage and resulting fostering of these ideals in their now global Apogee family, what this new paradigm for human achievement may yet achieve in the future seems to be as unlimited as human potential itself.

The Schneider Family and The Apogee Foundation:
A Living Legacy

Dr. Bernard Schneider's and Mrs. Marjorie Schneider's children, physician Susan Schneider and attorney Kenneth Schneider have become globally respected medical and legal professionals and leaders in their fields. In doing, however, they have succeeded not only in living up to to their parents’ superlative professional standards but also to their supreme human ideals.

Susan Schneider and Kenneth Schneider have now succeeded to their parents’ seats on The Apogee Foundation's Board of Directors, continuing Bernard Schneider's and Marjorie Schneider's rich traditions of service to mankind – but also, in so doing, taking the Schneider family's living legacy to new heights for the benefit of future generations.

The Schneider family and The Apogee Foundation have thus become like mirrors of each other and of human benevolence at its culmination. As such, they serve as perfect reflections of Bernard Schneider’s and Marjorie Schneider’s beautiful spirit and profound devotion to the best that all of us can achieve. Through The Apogee Foundation and everyone whose lives they’ve been able to improve and whose talents are now being realized, Bernard Schneider and Marjorie Schneider have been able to dedicate their resources of every kind to allow others to fulfill their dreams and thus to achieve their highest potential in life.

This magnanimous tradition continues today, with the next generation of Schneiders, Susan Schneider and Kenneth Schneider, now taking up the mantle of this living legacy to ensure that this great institution and its hallowed vision for mankind will be perpetuated for generations yet to come.

Susan Schneider MD
Envisioning a Better World

Dr. Susan Schneider, the second daughter of Bernard Schneider and Marjorie Schneider, is not only a revered physician and a renowned scientist, she also is an accomplished artist in her own right, who now brings this special blend of talents and experience to serve and further her family's benevolent traditions.

Susan serves both on Apogee's Board of Directors and as the Foundation’s Director of Visual Arts and Sciences. Susan Schneider M.D. is a person of seemingly limitless brilliant facets. In addition to her degrees, honors and accomplishments in the field of medicine and scientific discovery, she has parallel degrees, honors and accomplishments across cultural fields: having excelled throughout her academic and professional careers in both the arts and sciences simultaneously.

Susan Schneider was not only earned a higher degree in fine arts from one of America’s most prestigious universities, but she went on to become a successful ballet dancer: performing on both national and international stages throughout her professional career. The crowning achievement of this career, however, has been Susan’s efforts to pass on her profound knowledge and experience of the arts by becoming an award winning choreographer, the director of her own dance company, and ultimately a key figure in the evolution of The Apogee Foundation.

Dr. Schneider followed these academic and artistic achievements by also becoming a world renowned physician and medical researcher – at which point she continued to employ her extraordinary artistic and human sensibilities to actively participate in, create, sponsor and direct a host of arts organizations on all levels – bringing life and health to the soul of mankind – while also re-employing her unique creative capacities and love of humanity to bring life and health to the physical world of mankind: finding cures and providing treatments for people suffering from disease around the entire world.

Bringing together this unparalleled background as both an artist and scientist, Dr. Susan Schneider is now carrying her family's philanthropic legacy to new levels by merging all of these talents into the development of The Apogee Foundation and all that it stands for. Who knows what may yet lay ahead for someone with so much to share and so much willingness to share it? Her many talents and accomplishments notwithstanding, surely the most impressive thing about Susan Schneider is her ability and willingness to dedicate her stunning spectrum of talents to making life better for others. It is this resplendent combination of qualities that mark Susan Schneider M.D. as the true perpetuator of the Schneider family legacy.

Who knows what benefits the world will yet experience thanks to this new visionary? Whatever the future may yet hold for this great creative spirit, we can only hope that the answer is: very much, indeed – for the sake of all of us and of all who will follow.

Kenneth Schneider Esq.:
Achieving the Potential

The youngest child of Bernard Schneider and Marjorie Schneider, Kenneth Schneider, is now carrying all of these traditions beyond what anyone would have thought possible by devoting his life’s work and transcendent abilities as both a distinguished international lawyer and negotiator and an accomplished performing artist to develop The Apogee Foundation: enabling it to achieve levels of effectiveness never before seen in fulfilling its mission of fostering human creative potential on a global basis.

Thanks to these untiring efforts by Ken Schneider, serving as President of the Foundation, within a mere half-decade of its incorporation Apogee was selected to receive the national award for Top Non-Profit Organization following a rigorous review and appraisal of over 10,000 nominees by a committee of independent experts.

Kenneth Schneider is no stranger to high achievement, however. A true renaissance man who also became one of the finest lawyers operating in the financial capitals of the USA, EU and CIS: successfully handling representations in more than 50 countries on all six inhabited continents. Schneider now applies these same skills, however, to even higher objectives: achieving humanity’s highest potential.

Soon after Ken Schneider was asked to become a founding executive of Millhouse Capital – which, with Schneider's Midas touch, soon became one of world's most important international asset management groups – he sought to achieve similarly golden results in the worlds of the arts and education, with The Apogee Foundation, and then moved on to conquer further worlds in the same way through media and technology with the formation of the Aurience Ltd. consulting group in Europe which, under his leadership, took as its motto and call to action: ‘Work to Inspire.’

And that is exactly what Kenneth Schneider has done his entire life: by merging his extraordinary careers in law, finance and management with his lifelong experience as a creative artist, a media guru and pure intellectual. Kenneth has achieved nothing less than marshalling the full spectrum of human potential into a global organization dedicated to helping others to do the same: one that is literally, in the words of The Apogee Foundation motto also conceived by Schneider himself, ‘recreating the future of human creativity.’

And the rest, as they say, is history: history that is being created around all of us and for all of us every day thanks to what Bernard Schneider and Marjorie Schneider have enabled in the world, and what their family's complete dedication to fulfilling the supreme potential that all of us possess continues to make possible for us and those who will follow us: a global family of humanity.

All of us may yet hope one day to join the Schneider family in such endeavors: uniting everyone as one great family of mankind that can achieve our highest human potential and reach new culminations of human history together.

About the Author

Richard Morrison is a journalist and a professional writer presently researching and writing about social and cultural leaders around the world, of which work his current series of articles about the Schneider family and The Apogee Foundation form a part.