Honoring a Trustee with a Heart of Gold
When Ruth Schwarzkopf completed her nine-year term as a Palm Health Foundation (PHF) trustee in December 2023, she left a legacy that began not in the boardroom, but a ballroom.
About a decade before she joined the board, Ruth attended the foundation’s inaugural Nursing Celebration at The Breakers Palm Beach. She was a hospital nursing director at the time and had never seen any significant acknowledgement of nurses anywhere. “To have somebody say nursing is a special and unique profession and recognize the dedication and the hard work we do every day was amazing to me,” Ruth said.
She was hooked.
Ruth advanced as a nursing leader within Tenet Health while at the same time becoming one of the foundation’s most dedicated volunteers. In the years prior to joining the board, she took on numerous committee and advocacy roles to support the foundation’s work to strengthen the nursing profession and improve the quality of healthcare in Palm Beach County.
Once she became a trustee in 2014, she guided grant investments and leadership as a member of the Community Investment Committee and Nominating and Board Governance Committee. And she led on evolving the foundation’s nursing recognition and scholarship programs, the most meaningful experiences for her. “When you read scholarship applications, you see how people are willing to overcome hardships in their own lives to go to nursing school,” Ruth said. “We can say to them, ‘come here, we’ll help you.’”
Ruth was instrumental in helping the foundation help others on a larger scale through the Volunteer Nurse Corps. First established by PHF in 2016, the program is administered by the School of Nursing at Palm Beach Atlantic University and utilizes volunteer nurses to provide health information, education, and care to vulnerable populations in Palm Beach County—a role that was critical during the COVID-19 pandemic, and where Ruth’s leadership was invaluable.
Ruth’s care and compassion extend to her giving. She established The Schwarzkopf Family Greatest Need Fund at Palm Health Foundation to support evolving community challenges. “I put all my trust in the board and being good stewards of the foundation’s assets,” she said. “It’s one of the hardest working, most dynamic, dedicated boards I’ve ever been on, and the staff and their enormous engagement with community and understanding their needs really makes PHF stand out.”
Patrick McNamara, president and CEO of Palm Health Foundation, describes Ruth as “a true nursing leader who can see through the complexity of our ever-changing healthcare system to ensure the patient’s needs always come first. She cares deeply about people. We’ve experienced it in her leadership of the foundation, particularly during the pandemic when she served as our eyes and ears for how we could best support healthcare professionals and the community. And we have experienced it in her friendship. She is always the first trustee to congratulate staff on milestones with handwritten notes and a kind word. She sets the example for healthcare professionals to lead with compassion—which she will continue to do for a long time as a volunteer for the foundation and in the nursing community.”
The feeling is mutual. “I know what a hardworking dedicated group they are, and I only expect great things to continue,” Ruth said.
