The chronicle of Stanley Bergman’s life transcends the abyss of Nazi Germany, apartheid South End tonwardvo Wall Street in the USA. Survival under the former circumstances depends upon lavish doses of mental fortitude supplemented by moral clarity. As Stanley was only born in Port Elizabeth, he never had to endure the intemperate bully-like behaviour of the Hitlerite regime. Being personally fascinated about people who not only survive such trauma but rise above it, I was compelled to create a blog about Stanley Bergman.
To acknowledge his success in business, and to highlight the man, I was on the horns of a dilemma. Stanley did nor readily cast a light on the past but instead focused on his post Port Elizabeth experiences. As the focus of the series Port Elizabeth of Yore is on a town prior to 1960 yet still wanting to shine a light of his post apartheid life, I was compelled to create a new series Gqeberha of Today. This blog is largely an attribute to his business life using the July 2026 copy of BusinesTech as its concrete slab.
BusinessTech summarises Stanley’s accomplishments as follows: South African man leaves with R900 million after building a Fortune 500 company in the United States. That heading did not attract my attention. No mass firings of synapses occurred. But what had intrigued me were the words born in South End. Clearly an anomaly, an oddity. Questions sparked questions and speculation. What was life like? How extensive was apartheid? Synapses fired in excitation.
Life as a businessman
South African-born Stanley Bergman has been the longest-serving CEO of Henry Schein in the United States, a company that is now worth over $9.6 billion (R160.6 billion).He is credited with being the driving force behind the company’s success and has left the CEO role with over R900 million in company shares for his service.
Life in Port Elizabeth
Bergman was born in Port Elizabeth (now Gqeberha) in 1950 to Jewish parents who had fled Nazi Germany in 1936.He grew up in South End, which was a working-class neighbourhood that he later described as a “totally functional multicultural environment”. His childhood was shaped by apartheid. Although he was raised in a home where racism was openly rejected, he attended a segregated school and watched as the government declared South End a whites-only area in 1963. This forced families from different racial groups to leave before much of the suburb was demolished.
Post P.E.
After school, Bergman studied at the University of the Witwatersrand, earning a Bachelor of Commerce degree in 1972 and a Certificate in the Theory of Accounting in 1973. After this, he and his wife, Marion, a doctor who had worked in Soweto, moved to London, then settled in New York a year later, when Bergman was 26.
His career at Henry Schein began in 1980 when he joined the New York-based dental supplier as chief financial officer. Bergman has said he was drawn to the company because of its values rather than its size. “They had a belief in aligning business with social value. They’d work shoulder to shoulder with their people, and they did a lot in philanthropy,” he said of the founding Schein family.
In 1989, Bergman became chairman and CEO of what was then a regional dental supplier generating $225 million in annual revenue. Over the next three and a half decades, he oversaw a massive period of growth. Henry Schein expanded into a global distributor of dental and medical products, technology and healthcare services.
The company now operates in 33 countries and territories, offers more than 300,000 products through its distribution network, and recorded sales of $12.7 billion in 2024.
It is also ranked No. 333 on the Fortune 500 list. During Bergman’s tenure, annual revenue grew from $225 million (R3.7 billion) in 1989 to almost $13 billion (R217 billion) in 2024, while the company’s market value increased from $290 million (R4.8 billion) at its 1995 stock market listing to around $9.6 billion (R160 billion). Henry Schein said Bergman also helped transform the business from a primarily US-based mail-order dental supplier into a global giant in dental distribution, medical supplies, healthcare software and digital services.
In July 2025, the company announced that Bergman would retire as CEO at the end of the year after 45 years with the business, including more than 35 years as chief executive. “With the progress made advancing our BOLD+1 strategic plan and with strong management in place, it is the right time for me to retire at the end of the year,” Bergman said.
“Henry Schein has been my professional home for 45 years, and I will conclude this chapter of my life with enormous gratitude for the opportunity to serve as CEO and with great confidence in the company’s future.”Lead director Philip Laskawy praised Bergman’s leadership. “Under Stan’s leadership, Henry Schein has become the global leader in providing dental and medical products and solutions for healthcare providers,” he said. “We owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to Stan for his steadfast devotion to Henry Schein.”
Reflecting on his career, Bergman has often credited his upbringing in South Africa for shaping his leadership philosophy. “Success is all about caring about people. I learned from my late mother growing up in Port Elizabeth that if you treat people how you want to be treated, things work out,” he said. “And from my late father, I learned to always look for the good in people and be optimistic.” Although he has retired as CEO, Bergman remains chairman of Henry Schein and owns about 646,847 company shares worth more than $55 million, or roughly R906 million. He and his wife have also maintained close ties with South Africa through education, healthcare and charitable initiatives, including support for Wits University and programmes that expanded opportunities for healthcare students across Africa.
Source: BusinessTech July 2026
