Lead photo: Stanley Bergman gives remarks upon receiving NAW’s 2025 Dirk Van Dongen Lifetime Achievement Award during NAW’s 2025 Executive Summit on Jan. 28, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (NAW photo)

One of North America’s largest healthcare solutions distributors will soon undergo a changing of the guard atop its leadership for the first time in decades.

Henry Schein announced July 15 that Stanley Bergman — the company’s CEO for more than 35 years — will retire at the end of 2025 after 45 years with the company.

Bergman will continue in his current role until his retirement and remain as Chairman thereafter.

The company said its board has begun a formal search process with an executive search firm for its next CEO and will consider internal and external candidates.

“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 in a news release. “I look forward to working with the board to identify my successor and effect a smooth transition. 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.”

Under Bergman, Henry Schein went from a small, U.S.-based dental mail order company to become what the company describes as the largest global full service dental distributor of products and services and a leading medical distributor to alternate care sites with a growing presence in home-delivered products. Henry Schein’s revenue grew from $225 million in 1989 to nearly $13 billion in 2024, representing an compound annual growth rate of 17.5%, while its market capitalization grew from $290 million at the time of its IPO in 1995 to a current value of almost $9 billion. The company has about 25,000 employees today.

At NAW’s 2025 Executive Summit on Jan. 28, Bergman received the association’s 2025 Dirk Van Dongen Lifetime Achievement Award.

“It has been my greatest privilege to lead Team Schein over the past 35-plus years,” Bergman said. “Guided by our purpose-driven mission, we have built an agile company that is able to meet the changing needs of our customers, has created significant shareholder value and is well-positioned for the future.”

Bergman acknowledged that, as part of its succession planning, Henry Schein simplified the business earlier this year by separating into distinct operations divisions — Global Dental Distribution; Global Medical Distribution; Global Specialty Products; and Global Technology.

“With the team continuing to balance the company’s five constituents that make up the Henry Schein Mosaic of Success (suppliers, customers, investors, employees and society at large) and maintaining the values of Team Schein, I believe that Henry Schein’s best years are yet to come,” Bergman wrote in a letter to company staff.