STRATEGIC PLANNING, MARKETING & DEVELOPMENT
STEVEN SCHINDLER
Founder & CEO
Steven is an insightful strategist, brand development and integrated marketing communications authority whose work is focused in several impact areas: Purpose, Social Justice and Environmental Conservation. A poised strategic planning advisor, Steven helps organizations align purpose with brand and vision with marketing and operations to grow impact and deliver sustainable results. His extensive for-profit expertise and nonprofit know-how empowers his passion and commitment to protecting wild places and ensuring the rights for people of all nationalities, color, culture, sexual orientation and religion.
As Co-Executive Director of the nonprofit start-up, Chamber of Purpose (CoP), Steven is working to prop up this cross-sector business initiative. The brainchild of San Diego’s foremost leaders developed over years, CoP focuses on advancing purpose by connecting the Nonprofit, For-Profit and Government sectors in a new Fourth Sector: A physical and virtual place propelling the intersection of today’s three business sectors to improve our entire community. Steven assumed the volunteer co-leadership role in early 2019 and is managing a team of collaborators in business formation and strategic planning, fundraising and reputation building to bring this business to reality.
Steven is the son of orphaned child-survivors of the Holocaust. His connection with his family's experience and his status as a son of immigrants propelled him into reconciliation work -- bonding families of victims with communities of former perpetrators to create safer and more connected societies for future generations. After a successful first-ever Butterfly Project (TBP) initiative in Germany in early 2019, Steven is at work developing GenerationE, a network of education partners to inspire empathy, to counter growing anti-Semitism and nationalism, and to connect and cultivate young upstanders amongst youth in Germany, Europe and beyond.
As a business advisor, Steven empowers corporate and cultural leaders to build visionary brands that create enduring connectivity and sustainable revenue streams. Before launching Connectivity LLC, Steven served as Executive Director for Birch Aquarium at the world-renowned Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Previously, as SVP/Chief Marketing Officer, he raised National Aquarium's reputation to the Number Two Aquarium in the U.S., and for 16-years led a destination-marketing, advertising and PR firm for hospitality clients throughout the US and Mexico. A digital technology innovator, Steven also co-founded a content aggregation/analytics start-up that provided software solutions to industry-leading online media, search and data security firms.
When he’s not at his desk you can often find Steven on his road bike rolling up and down the coast or in the hills challenging his friends at sprint points. Typically, caffeinated coffee is involved.
