Stanley Bergman grew up in a country that didn’t make sense to him. Born in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, to Jewish parents who’d fled Nazi Germany in 1936, he was raised in a household where racism was explicitly condemned—and then walked each morning to a school segregated because of apartheid. He’d come home to the working-class suburb of South End, which Bergman describes as a “totally functional multicultural environment”—until 1963, when the government declared it a “whites-only” area, forced out friends and neighbors by race, and eventually bulldozed it. Soon after Bergman got his accounting degree, he and his wife, Marion, a physician who’d been working in the Black township of Soweto, left for London, and came to New York a year later.

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He was 26. He brought with him a philosophy of leadership that would shape his career and his tenure as CEO of Henry Schein, which ended earlier this month after 36 years at the helm. (Fred Lowery became CEO on March 2, with Bergman staying on as chairman.) Bergman took it from a regional dental supplier with $225 million in revenue to a $13.2 billion-a-year global distributor of dental and medical supplies that’s No. 333 on the Fortune 500 list. He credits that growth not only to acquisitions and innovation but also to the values of social impact and philanthropy.

What drew him to to join the Long Island company as CFO in 1980 was seeing how the founders treated their workers.

“They had a belief in aligning business with social values,” he says of the Schein family, who’d started the business in 1932. “It started with Henry. He’d gone to Florida and brought back Smuckers jelly for everyone in the company. There were about 150 people. At Christmas, everybody would get case of wine and at Thanksgiving, they’d get a turkey. His wife Esther did the books. They’d work shoulder-to-shoulder with their people, and they did a lot in philanthropy.”

Henry’s son Jay Schein, who took over as CEO in 1980, built on that ethos in visible and sometimes costly ways. When the HIV/AIDS crisis was taking hold in the 1980s, Jay directed the company to publish an infection control handbook for dentists. They arrived at the 1986 American Dental Association convention with the message to ‘Sterilize as if your life depends on it’ and were asked to leave. “They accused us of hype,” says Bergman. A few years later, dentist David Acer was accused of infecting several patients by disregarding safety protocols as he developed AIDS. Henry Schein was right. And sales went up.

The company Henry Schein joined the Fortune 500 in 2004, debuting at No. 487. It has appeared on Fortune’s World’s Most Admired Companies for 21 consecutive years. As Bergman steps away from the CEO role, Bergman reflected on some lessons:

Choose character qualities over credentials. As a rookie CEO, Bergman got advice from a mentor at Abbott when putting together a team. “He said, ‘Who’s your best people person?’ I said, ‘Jimmy the accountant but he knows nothing about the dental business.’ His response: ‘He’ll learn. He’ll put a team together,’” says Bergman. His deal lawyer became head of strategy, a warehouse manager became head of HR. Bergman hired for values and soft skills, knowing they could build domain knowledge on the job. “It’s all about the teamwork.” In times of rapid change, domain expertise can become outdated in a way that character and an ability to learn does not.

Diversify and delegate. “I always surrounded myself with people who have different opinions. Our CFO is the most conservative person. Our head of strategy is the most liberal person. The success of Henry Schein was to get the two sides to get along,” he said. “The biggest thing is getting the team to work together. I never broke a stalemate. I would encourage this one to talk to that one and resolve the issue and come to me with a plan, saying you never need to get my approval. If you both agree, you can do it.”

Bet on winners and partner to grow. Along with decentralizing distribution centers, Bergman knew he had to go global to grow. He started by simplifying his offering: “There were about 900 dental software systems out there, so we decided to pick one and make that the leader,” he said. Then he expanded through joint ventures, doing dozens of deals with people who knew local markets. “We acquired expertise through joint ventures, kept those entrepreneurs involved, and then built platforms around it.”

Define your business around who you serve. “The only way you can succeed in this environment is not through price, but through value: How do you help a practitioner provide better oral care, and at the same time help them operate a more efficient practice?” said Bergman. The kinds of products they manufacture and services they sell, how that’s delivered, will change as customer needs change. “Henry Schein is not going to be in the business we’re in today.”

Contribute to society. “We have five constituents: the peopl

He fled apartheid South Africa at 26—then built a $13 billion Fortune 500 company. Here are his rules