John Schneider

Born in De Pere on May 25, 1971, the youngest of William and Sandra’s six children, he was a 5-foot-6 running back for the Abbot Pennings Squires—class of 1989—and punishment at home meant taking away the football cards. He spent a year at the University of St. Thomas studying history and secondary education until a shoulder injury ended his playing days. He wrote Packers general manager Ron Wolf more than once asking for a scouting chance, landed a 1992 internship, and worked as a Packers scout from 1993 to 1996.

Stops in Kansas City, a year in Seattle under Ted Thompson, and Washington followed before he returned to Green Bay as a personnel aide to Wolf and Thompson. Seattle hired him as general manager in January 2010, a week after Pete Carroll. Super Bowl XLVIII’s roster that beat Denver had only four players who predated Schneider; he drafted Russell Wilson, Richard Sherman, Earl Thomas, and Bobby Wagner, and he signed Marshawn Lynch. In early 2010 alone he made 284 roster moves, including the Lynch trade.

Super Bowl LX in 2026, with a different coach and a different roster, made him the first general manager to win two titles that way in the same franchise. Sporting News named him Executive of the Year in 2025 after the second championship. With his wife he founded Ben’s Fund in 2012, named for a son diagnosed with autism at three. Abbot Pennings merged into Notre Dame Academy a year after he left; hometown stories still dateline De Pere.