Monarch Fund Protects Key Areas in the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere

Gabriel Holschneider serves as chairman and CEO of the Rainmaker Group, a consulting company in Mexico City that focuses on risk management. Aside from his professional responsibilities, Gabriel Holschneider serves on the Board of Directors of the Mexican Fund for the Conservation of Nature, or Fondo Mexicano para la Conservacion de la Naturaleza (FMCN).

One of the largest and most effective environmental funds in Latin America, FMCN is dedicated to fighting for the preservation of natural areas within Mexico. A key initiative for the group is the Monarch Fund, a permanent project that works to promote the conservation and protection of wilderness areas within the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve.

Each year, millions of the iconic orange-and-black butterflies make a 4,800-kilometer journey from Canada all the way to their winter sanctuaries in Mexico. Using the sun to navigate, the butterflies spend eight months crossing the continent. Once they arrive, large clusters of monarchs rest together high in the trees within an area of about 56,000 hectares, approximately 100 kilometers northwest of Mexico City. 

In an effort to conserve and protect the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve, FMCN actively works to raise funds that support efforts toward environmental education, restoration, forest fire protection, and community involvement.

Boston Children's Hospital Pioneering Hydrocephalus Program

Attorney Gabriel Holschneider is the chief executive officer of the Rainmaker Group. An active environmental advocate, Mr. Holschneider is a supporter of Fondo Mexicano para la Conservacion de la Naturaleza (Mexican Fund for the Conservation of Nature), a major nonprofit organization based in Latin America. In addition, Gabriel Holschneider contributes to Boston Children’s Hospital.

Through the years, Boston Children’s Hospital has served as a trailblazer for numerous breakthroughs in pediatrics. The hospital is credited as the first in history to successfully treat hydrocephalus via shunting - a process that reroutes excess fluid from the brain into another body cavity.

Sixty years later, Boston Children’s hydrocephalus program continues to be an industry leader in treatment. New shunting technologies such as externally programmable shunts have been successfully tested by the hospital. Moreover, the hydrocephalus program has been instrumental in the refinement of minimally invasive surgical techniques, including the landmark ETV/CPC (Endoscopic Third Ventriculostomy with Choroid Plexus Coagulation) procedure.

Corazon de Pasto - Committed to Forest Conservation

A graduate of the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City, Gabriel Holschneider launched the risk management consulting firm the Rainmaker Group in 2004. Gabriel Holschneider is also a philanthropist and the founder of the conservation group Corazon de Pasto, or “Heart of Grass,” a Rainmaker corporate responsibility initiative.

Established in 2011 in response to a fire that burned over 200,000 hectares of forests in Coahuila, Mexico, Corazon de Pasto strives to educate the public on the causes of this devastating fire in hopes of avoiding similar disasters in the future and to promote environmentalism in Mexico for the benefit of current and future generations.

Those who visit the charity’s website, www.corazondepasto.com.mx, can find information about the ecosystem of Coahuila along with an instructive children’s game entitled “Pedroso, The Game,” which teaches young people about the area’s biodiversity. To learn additional fun facts about animals and flora native to the forests of Coahuila, individuals can fo

Boston Children's the Top-Ranked Pediatric Hospital

Gabriel Holschneider is an experienced attorney, entrepreneur, and founder and CEO of the Rainmaker Group in Mexico City. A committed philanthropist, Gabriel Holschneider supports a number of charities, including Boston Children’s Hospital.

Last July, U.S. News and World Report named Boston Children’s Hospital as the top ranked pediatric health care center in the United States. In its rankings, U.S. News looked at 10 different pediatric specialties and Boston Children’s scored in the top three of all of them. Some of the specialties included neurology, orthopedics, pulmonology, and gastroenterology. 

In her comments, Boston Children’s CEO and president Sandra L. Fenwick recognized the hospital for its diverse background in caring for patients who have many different conditions. She also praised the staff and doctors whose efforts led to the hospital's top ranking by U.S. News, which has compiled a list of the best pediatric hospitals in the country each year for more than a decade.

Business Units at the Rainmaker Group

Gabriel Holschneider is a Mexico-based executive who holds a juris doctor from Universidad Iberoamericana. Following several years spent working as an associate for SAI Law and Economics, Gabriel Holschneider founded the Rainmaker Group, where he currently serves as chairman. 

Headquartered in Mexico City, the Rainmaker Group provides risk mitigation, transfer, and retention consulting on an international scale. Founded in 2004, the firm is divided into four business units in order to best address the needs of clients: 

1. Alternative Risk Finance: a unit that focuses on addressing risk for clients through self-insurance, underwriting, reinsurance, actuarial work, and pension strategies.

2. Wealth Preservation: a unit that provides asset-based lending and socially responsible credit. 

3. Health Care: a unit that invests in health care sectors and startup incubation services.

4. Technology: a unit that supports coordination between the technology and financial markets through structured financing and other efforts.

Boston Children’s Hospital May Have Found Cure for Type 1 Diabetes

Gabriel Holschneider is an attorney, an entrepreneur, and the founder and president of Rainmaker Group. As a dedicated philanthropist, Gabriel Holschneider supports a number of charitable organizations, including Boston Children’s Hospital.

Researchers at Boston Children’s Hospital are hoping to commence clinical trials on a treatment that uses a patient’s blood cells to treat type 1 diabetes. The same procedure has proven to be successful for treating mice with type 1 diabetes, in that all the animals studied were cured for a short time and one-third were cured for life.

This new treatment has the potential to cure type 1 diabetes by changing the way the immune system functions. Similar studies have attempted to use immunotherapy to cure type 1 diabetes by using a patient’s blood cells to stimulate the immune system.

Researchers at Boston Children’s Hospital are currently working with scientists from the San Diego-based company Fate Therapeutics to design a pill that will modulate stem cells in the blood to treat type 1 diabetes. They have even had a meeting with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in hopes of commencing a human clinical trial.                           

Creating Awareness for the Preservation of Forests in Coahuila, Mexico

Gabriel Holschneider is a conservationist and entrepreneur and the founder of Corazon de Pasto, a movement that aims to create awareness of the need to preserve Mexico’s Coahuila forests. Gabriel Holschneider is also a board member of the largest conservation fund in Latin America, Fondo Mexicano para la Conservacion de la Naturaleza, which also shares the mission to preserve and protect Coahuila's forests, which have recently sustained substantial damage from wildfires. 

More than 200,000 acres of Coahuila’s forests were destroyed in 2011 from massive and wide-spread fires. The cause of 50 percent of these fires is believed to have been the result of farmers losing control of burns they had deliberately started. There was no authority acting to ensure that farmers had a proper fire-suppression method in place before starting a controlled burn. 

Sadly, the area the fires covered included an ecological corridor that was home to a large population of Mexican black bears, and many animals perished in the fires. Corazon de Pasto aims to inform and educate others about this event and to help prevent similar catastrophes from occurring in the future.