Continental Magazine: Idea Makers

Current Issue | October 2005

Jump to: Home Grown
Jump to: A Nobel Effort
Jump to: Pitching In

Rick Schnieders
Home Grown

Ask Rick Schnieders to recommend a business management book and he’ll likely hand you a copy of Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. “There really aren’t a lot of good business management books,” says Schnieders, CEO and chairman of food service distributor Sysco Corp. “If a person is interested in general management, literature is more helpful in developing an understanding of the skills you need to succeed.”

An avid reader, Schnieders is also a proponent of a liberal arts education — he earned his BA in mathematics from the University of Iowa — as the best preparation for a career in business. “Even if a person wants eventually to go on to business school, I think a liberal education is a far better starting point for a career in general management,” he says.

Schnieders, 57, has been in the business of food distribution nearly all his life. His father was owner and proprietor of Bob’s Market, one of only two groceries in Remsen, the small northeast Iowa town where Schnieders was born. As soon as he was old enough, Schnieders found himself in the driver’s seat of an Econoline van making as many as 50 grocery deliveries a day.

When not bringing groceries to customers, Schnieders pitched in where he could, including managing the soap aisle. “It wasn’t more than eight or 10 feet of shelf space,” he says. “But my father gave me that responsibility about the time I entered high school, and I was responsible for the inventory, restocking the shelves, ordering, and making price changes.” The intention was to train Schnieders or any of his brothers and sisters to eventually take over management of Bob’s — something none of the kids ever did.

Instead of managing a family grocery, Schnieders landed a bit higher as the leader of North America’s largest food service distributor, which comprises nearly 160 locations and more than 46,000 employees and topped $30 billion in sales in 2004. Sysco’s approximately 400,000 customers range from independent and chain restaurants to corporate, college, and hospital cafeterias. Regardless of the difference in scale, Schnieders credits his father as his biggest professional influence.

“He was a hard worker and was willing to try anything,” he says. “Once he opened a greenhouse because he thought the town needed one. We’d plant rows and rows of potatoes. He was always experimenting with something and taking risks.”

Schnieders’ own willingness to take risks helped him lead the charge in the 1990s to forge a new brand strategy for Sysco. “One of the things that had worked well for Sysco was a strong corporate brand,” he says. “It was so successful that some of the customers started pushing back.” In essence, customers began wanting a brand name that felt more local and less corporate.

To mitigate the growing discontent among some of Sysco’s customers, Schnieders — who at the time was senior vice president of merchandising — created task forces for a handful of specialty brands, including Arrezzio for Italian foods, Casa Solana (Tex-Mex), Jade Mountain (Asian), and Block & Barrel (deli foods).

“There was a lot risk involved, and there was a lot of second-guessing going on at senior levels while we worked on the project,” Schnieders recalls. Some of the resistance came from Charles Cotros, who was CEO at the time. “We’re all like that. It’s natural to be attached to something you created. So while I didn’t feel my job was threatened, it was a professional risk that in the end worked out very well.” So well, in fact, that today Sysco’s specialty brands constitute a significant portion of the company’s business.

One gets the feeling that to Schnieders, developing the specialty brands was akin to starting a greenhouse or planting rows of potatoes. It wasn’t the scale that mattered. He saw a need and took a risk, just as he learned at Bob’s Market.

— Chris Anderson

Michael Scharf A Nobel Effort

Photos on the walls of Michael Scharf’s office at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law show him in Tanzania, Australia, Greece, Ireland, Spain, and China. There’s even one of him on horseback in front of Egyptian pyramids.

He may look like a typical tourist, but what takes Scharf from country to country is his expertise in international criminal law and a passionate commitment to the idea that those who want peace must work for justice. This December, his efforts may land him in Oslo for the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize ceremony. Scharf, who is co-nominated with Paul Williams of American University in Washington, D.C., is among the 199 individuals and groups nominated for this year’s prize.

The two professors are co-founders of the Public International Law & Policy Group (PILPG), a nonprofit organization that provides free legal assistance to countries in conflict, developing states, and judicial bodies trying war criminals and cases of crimes against humanity. The group focuses its efforts on peacebuilding, international justice, post-conflict political development, and public international law. Its advice and insight are sought by governments, tribunals, and mediators around the globe. “Eight governments sent letters in support of our nomination,” says Scharf, who spent the early part of his career at the State Department. “Neither of us saw this coming. It is a tremendous honor just to be on the list.”

Operating as a pro bono law firm, PILPG relies on a network of more than 60 attorneys and former diplomats who volunteer their services. Law and international affairs graduate students at Case Western and American University have researched precedents and provided extensive support to five international war-crime tribunals. And Scharf himself was one of only five international experts selected to train Iraqi special tribunal judges in preparation for the trial of Saddam Hussein.

Since its creation in 1995, PILPG has worked with more than 25 countries on issues such as the formulation of cease-fire agreements, constitution drafting, and treaty interpretation.

“We represented the Bosnians at Dayton and were able to help them secure fair and feasible peace accords,” Scharf says. “And we did the same for the ethnic Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh, a breakaway region in Azerbaijan. We assisted in bringing about the indictment of Charles Taylor [the Liberian president accused of crimes against humanity, war crimes, and violations of international humanitarian law]. And it was PILPG that declared what was happening in Darfur to be genocide before anyone else.

“We level the playing field,” Scharf explains, “by giving small groups and substates the ability to negotiate toe-to-toe with superpowers, and providing underfunded, understaffed special courts access to the resources and analysis they need to hold leaders accountable for their actions.”

Since the announcement of the Nobel nomination, Scharf has been getting a great deal of attention. But he’s not one to linger in the spotlight or rest on his laurels.

“I spend most of my time in the trenches, which is exactly where I want to be,” he says. “Winning the Nobel Peace Prize won’t change that. Because what’s important is actually helping the people sitting at the negotiating table and on the bench who are working toward a better future for us all.”

Which is exactly why Scharf’s next trip might be a journey to Oslo this December.

— Laura Taxel

John Damonti
Pitching In; Brystol-Myers Squibb Foundation

“What could we possibly do here?” John Damonti asked himself as his eyes took in a bleak African village on his first visit to the continent in 1998. What he didn’t see — there was no electricity, no health care infrastructure, not even a reliable source of clean water — was as troubling as what he did see: African men, women, and children facing extermination by AIDS. “Infection rates are up to 37 percent of the whole population,” says Damonti as he struggles to paint the picture of the AIDS rampage in sub-Saharan Africa. “Twenty-five million people in Africa are HIV-positive, and 90 percent of them don’t know it.”

Damonti was in Africa in his capacity as president of the Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the pharmaceutical giant. A first impulse was to run, but Damonti’s unique background had prepared him well.

“I’m a social worker at heart,” says the 45-year-old Rockland County, N.Y., native, who earned a master’s in social work at Fordham University and has worked in a psychiatric hospital. Where Damonti sees a need, he wants to pitch in and help. And that’s exactly what he’s done during his 12 years at the BMS Foundation. But faced with a challenge such as AIDS in Africa, more than a social worker mentality is needed to keep focused. That’s where Damonti’s competitive side — he was a scholarship athlete in lacrosse as an undergraduate at Bowling Green — comes into play. It’s an unusual combination for an executive — equal parts compassion and competitive zeal.

When Damonti went to Africa, he brought a huge commitment from Bristol- Myers Squibb. The company’s $150 million Secure the Future program represents the single largest corporate effort to fight HIV/ AIDS among women and children in sub-Saharan Africa. It’s an important contribution from the maker of one of the most robust anti- AIDS armories. (BMS produces the HIV/AIDS drugs Videx, Zerit, and Sustiva.)

But, Damonti admits, if you actually go to Africa and see the suffering, the money seems insignificant. “You walk into these villages and at first you don’t know where to begin. But as you stay in the villages you begin to feel the strength of the people who are doing so much with comparatively so little.”

For the past six years, Damonti has spent around two months each year on the ground in Africa. He says he is “reassured and confident that we can address this disease. We’ve always proceeded with the philosophy that we will help create African solutions for African problems.” A real key, John Damonti's Details Damonti says, is that BMS has trained dozens of Africans in managing a catastrophic-disease outbreak, and their knowhow and expertise will help Africa deal with future crises.

Along the way, Damonti has found that lessons learned in lacrosse apply to corporate philanthropy as well. For one, brawn doesn’t matter as much as accuracy and precision. “You can have as much impact with a $10,000 contribution as someone else might with a $100,000 contribution if you are working in the right areas,” he says.

In that vein, BMS now supports 170 cherry-picked initiatives in Africa. But Damonti also wants it understood that Africa isn’t BMS’ sole theater. He points out that contributions are also made in various communities in New Jersey (where the majority of its employees live) and — perhaps most significantly — to the company’s Freedom to Discover program, which Damonti says has provided more than $110 million over the past 28 years to fund unrestricted biomedical research “by the world’s greatest thinkers.” The last is big brain money, which for years has been BMS’ philanthropic calling card.

But nowadays Damonti expresses particular pride that BMS decided to stake so much on the ground in Africa. “This is the most devastating health care issue any of us is likely ever to see,” he says. “I wish we had got here earlier — but we were the first to make a major commitment in Africa. And we’re helping millions of people. I’m very proud of that.”

— Robert McGarvey

Photograph by: Wyatt McSpadden (Schnieders); Merlijn Doomernik (Scharf); Peter Murphy (Damonti)