Jean Sardo Transfer from Rotary club in MiamiJean was born of Italian parents in the Southeast of France near Grenoble where the 1968 Winter Olympics were held. He grew up in a small Alpine town of 6,000 called Vizille. With the Alps as a backdrop to his every day life he developed an everlasting sense of appreciation for “mother nature”. It is worth mentioning this town of Vizille as it is the cradle of the French Revolution. It was from this humble place that crowds began marching and protesting against the ruling and despotic French monarchy and ended in Paris where they took down the Bastille on July 14, 1789.
In 1966, Jean joined his father in Boston, Massachusetts. his dad had previously arrived to explore the possibility of investing in a local shoe factory. Mesmerized by the American way of life which Jean enjoyed to the fullest, he enrolled at Babson College and after graduation he was convinced to stay in the United States.
After college, Jean maintained the entrepreneurial spirit of his family starting up a Motivational Travel Agency in Chicago, a small optical chain in Florida and a restaurant in Coral Gables. For the next fifteen years, he moved to Mexico City, Mexico. With three other American associates the team managed a series of projects for their own company which dealt in natural gas distribution and power generation. In 1999 they were approached by Toyota Motors to assist them in the development and building of their first Latin American assembly plant. Jean was involved in the site selection, environmental impact, feasibility and infrastructure studies. He also managed all of the necessary permits up to the Certificate of Occupancy. After 4 and ½ years of intense performances and demanding schedules, the first Tacoma Pick Up Truck rolled out of the assembly line.
In 2005, Jean permanently returned to NYC. No longer willing to intensely travel he decided to seek an occupation that would be as close to his apartment as possible so he ended up in a neighborhood real estate agency no more that 30 feet away from his front door! In September it will be a year that I have been involved in this new service industry having closed 52 transactions including rentals of apartments, commercial retail spaces and brownstone sales.
Jean makes it very clear that he has been sharing his life with a wonderful woman, Andrea and his charming daughter, Désirée who is a teacher in the Miami-Dade County School System.
While his interests are too many to list here however Jean prides himself in guiding young adults toward education. Of the many youngsters he has helped in Mexico, two have taken our support very seriously; one has successfully passed her bar exam, speaking seven languages fluently and the other has just graduated as a dentist. The only thing Jean has asked of them is to be respectful of all people and to help others as they themselves have been helped and guided.
Jean and his wife also love to travel for pleasure, discovering new destinations, observing and experiencing how other people live. To him, Rotary is “the key to new friendships” allowing us to instantly be in touch with a million or more persons of similar characters and all dedicated to good will. And one of his coined motto is: “Discovery is the essence of youth”. He love to find out new things not only to stay young and abreast of developments but also to review the old and the forgotten.
One of his goals is that every day to look forward helping a total stranger, no matter how minute an action it may be, such as helping a lady in carrying her baby’s carriage up and out of the metro or making change for someone when he feels the extreme time pressures of not doing so. His belief is that if every day each one of us would do a favor for another person then there would be a lot less animosity on earth.
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Dan Schaffer - Class of 2007
Dan was born in Brooklyn NY and attended Brooklyn Prep and Fairfield Univ. He am the president of Peak Performance Strategies, LLC and The Confidential Sounding Board, where he assists individuals and companies in achieving the competitive edge quickly through enhancing both personal and business performance. He have been described as "a noted performance consultant, author, speaker and executive coach."
Many of Dan's clients include executives, professional athletes (NFL, NHL, PGA) and performers throughout the United States, Asia, South America, and Europe. They describe PPS as “street smart strategies for a competitive edge.” The Confidential Sounding Board supports leaders who are truly “alone at the top,” outnumbered, and want to turn the odds in their favor.
Dan truly enjoy the uniqueness and diversity of his practice and continually defying conventional wisdom. He take joy in thinking backwards, helping friends separate themselves from the pack and narrow the gap between work and play, helping them identify and get what they want. He say "friends" because most of my clients become friends.
Dan also has a wonderful fiancée & business associate, five great children (two girls and three boys), and twelve grandchildren.
One accomplishment that he is particularly proud of is that his book How Do We Tell The Children has had four stars on Amazon since 1986 and helped so many people, from the Pentagon to caregivers worldwide, comfort children in times of loss.
His current interests and goals include finishing a book CLICK! Getting the Edge and Keeping It, working on a screenplay with a major studio in Hollywood, and consulting for a variety of movie projects with Angel Light Pictures. Dan said that he thought "it would be nice to come out from under the radar but my clients chose to keep me a secret. At the end of the day it’s their call."
Andrea Schneider Class of 1988 is the General Manager of Chemac Inc.
Horst Schneider Class of 1988
Dr. Paul Scheiderman - President of Rotary Club of New York.Harshad Shah Class of 1987 is president of Chambord Inc. the wallpaper manufacturer and importer
Ruth Sharma Class of 2007 is the compliance officer of WestLB Mellon Asset Management
Rev. John Smith Class of 1979
Primo Sonda Class of 2007 is a director of the Van Goetherm and Partner AG the security brokerage and portfolio management services to private customer and institutional investor that was founded in 1998 and is based in Kreuzlingen, Switzerland.
Sumio Sone Class of 2004 is the presdient of Motion Planet Inc., the entertainment Management company
Patricia Soviero Class of 2006 is the Vice presdient of Sales of the Morton Andrews
Wilfried Steffen Class of 1998 is the CEO of the Mercedes-Benz United Kingdom Limited
Gidon Stern Class of 1983 is a partner with the Jones Day Law Firm.
Jordan Stojanovski Class of 2003 is the Presdient of the Logyx
Computer Corp the soft ware development company.
Eleanor Kramer Sypher Class of 2008 was born in Kansas City, Missouri. She decided at age ten that she wanted to live in New York. She moved here after receiving a B.A. from Smith College in Northampton, MA. Once in New York she taught Latin while studying at Columbia University for her M.A. (in Latin) and for her Ph.D. (in Greek and Latin). Since teaching jobs were scarce in colleges, she became a book editor, and then taught in a secondary school for eleven years when her daughter was small. By then, she was yawning in her own classes and was determined to make a change. She spent six months networking and then was offered a job at the van Ameringen Foundation, where she has been happily employed for 18 years.Eleanor is the Executive Director of the Ameringen Foundation which gives grants of about $4 million a year for clinical services and advocacy for the mentally ill and emotionally disturbed in metropolitan New York and Philadelphia. Her interests, however, remain strongly centered on education, her own (through reading, travel, opera, and theatre) and that of children. She is actively involved with a charter school in the South Bronx.In addition, to counter-balance her job as a grant giver, she has raised funds continuously for her church and for the school. Eleanor is amateur watercolorist and studies at the National Academy.Eleanor is one of the founders, and President of the Board, of the Bronx Charter School for Children. It opened in September of 2004 with Kindergarten and First graders, and, by adding one grade a year, will be at capacity in school year 2008-2009 with 396 Kindergarteners through Fifth graders.Her immediate family consists of herself and her daughter, Eleanor Holbrook Sypher. They are the 7th and 8th generation of Eleanors. Young E lives in mid-town and they visit often.Last fall Don Everett invited Eleanor to come to the New York Rotary lunch meetings, and she subsequently became a member. She enjoys the quality of the speakers, and the camaraderie of the members. Eleanor is drawn to the philanthropic efforts of the Club (especially the Gift of Life program).
