Madeleine Schachter | Burnished Musings

Description

Madeleine Schachter

Madeleine Schachter’s art traverses a journey to lightness, comprised of subtle palettes imbued with hints of gilded tones. Each piece implies movement, infused with buoyancy and sensation, and uses tilt and tinge to evoke a sense of hope and golden glints to enchant. Suggestive abstraction endows the viewer with prospect and possibility, and entrusting that implication will arouse contemplation to enable unique flights into self-reflection and sentiment. She works in mixed media, including pastels, watercolors, acrylics, metal leaf, and glass crystals, and she employs unusual materials, such as mascara.  

Ms. Schachter uses art to empower and engage people in transitional housing, survivors of domestic violence, refugees, in-patients at New York Presbyterian Hospital, inmates at the Rikers Correctional Facility, adult and pediatric patients in Hospice of Hope in Brasov, Bucharest, and Copaceni, Romania and Chisinau and Orhei, Moldova, and internally displaced persons due to war in Kyiv, Ukraine. She has led workshops for Syrian refugee children and trained those who work with them in Beqaa and Mount Lebanon, Lebanon, and she has led workshops for women, youth, and male change agents in Aweil, South Sudan. She has also led workshops for the staff of cablecaster CNBC, for the medical staff of Northwell Health Lenox Hill Hospital, and in New York and Delhi for patient capital investors in social entrepreneurship Acumen.  

She is the author of Creativity Connections: Wellness Through Artistic Expression, which explains how to use art to empower oneself and others; the book is now in its second edition. 

She has exhibited her artwork in museums, galleries, and events around the world, including Austria, China, England, France, Israel, Italy, Portugal, Spain, and the United States. Her sold and commissioned works are in many private collections. 

In addition to her work as an artist, Ms. Schachter is an Assistant Professor at Weill Cornell Medicine, where she teaches Medical Ethics and Advanced Clinical Ethics to medical students. She also serves on an Institutional Review Board, where she reviews biomedical research on human subjects related to cancer and global health. She is a member of the Ethics Committee of New York Presbyterian Hospital. In addition, she teaches Bioethics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, from which she has received letters of commendation for her teaching.  

She has been certified as a New York State certified Emergency Medical Technician and has also been certified in training on incident management and command systems and hazardous materials by FEMA, in hostile environment awareness training, in concussion training for youth sports coaches, and by the Collaborative Institution Training Initiative. She also is a Crime Victims Treatment Center advocate, supporting survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence in emergency departments. 

Previously, she practiced law for 30 years, most recently as Partner/Global Director of Corporate Social Responsibility at the international law firm Baker & McKenzie, where she worked exclusively on global pro bono and community service, diversity and inclusion, and sustainability matters with the firm’s 4000 lawyers based in more than 40 countries. 

Examples of her pro bono work include drafting harmonized model legislation to address disaster response; providing on-the-ground support, including in the operating room to an international medical mission as it performed volunteer restorative surgery on underprivileged children with cleft lips and cleft palates in Leyte, The Philippines; and providing legal and policy guidance in consultation with governments, such as in Yemen and Nepal, where she presented to their respective legislators. 

Ms. Schachter developed a global corporate social responsibility platform for public-private partnerships that focuses on humanitarian and health issues to address global poverty through demand-driven innovation. She is the author of the book Global Social Investment: A Practical Handbook for Corporate Social Responsibility Programs, which covers theories and practice, pragmatic approaches, and methodological tools for impact measurement. 

She is the author of other books, too: Law of Internet Speech, Informational and Decisional Privacy, and The Law Professor’s Handbook: A Practical Guide to Teaching Law. She recently wrote Fire Buddy, a children’s story that has been translated into French, Spanish, and Romanian. It recounts how a mother explains to a young boy that his firefighter friend has died, assuring her son that the deceased was lucky to have had him for his friend. Ms. Schachter’s work has also been published in legal and medical journals and treatises, including on global biomedical and legal ethics.  

While working full-time, she served as an Adjunct Professor at Fordham Law School for a decade, teaching courses on Internet speech, privacy, and media law to JD and LLM candidates. 

Ms. Schachter serves on the Board of Trustees of Children of Heroes, which provides emergency relief, legal aid, and psychosocial therapy to children bereaved by the loss of one or both parents due to the war in Ukraine; the Board of Trustees of Children’s Aid, which provides comprehensive support to children, youth, and their families in targeted high-needs New York City neighborhoods; and the Board of Trustees of Hospices of Hope, which supports patients suffering from terminal or life-limiting illness with specialist palliative care. Previously, she chaired the New York Presbyterian WCM Patients and Family Advisory Council; currently, she is a member of the Patients and Family Advisory Council of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. She has served on the Boards of Directors of Concern Worldwide, an international NGO that works to eradicate poverty in the world’s poorest countries, and on the Board of Directors of the International NGO Safety and Security Association, which works to improve the quality and effectiveness of safety and security for humanitarian relief and development assistance workers operating in dangerous environments. 

She has traveled to Aruba, the Bahamas, Belize, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, England, France, French Polynesia, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Hungary, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Jordan, Lebanon, Liberia, Mexico, Moldova, Nepal, The Netherlands, Northern Ireland, The Philippines, Poland, Romania, Saint Lucia, Saint Martin, Scotland, Sierra Leone, Slovenia, South Sudan, Spain, Switzerland, Tanzania, Turkey, Ukraine, Venezuela, Wales, and Yemen.  

Ms. Schachter is a Phi Beta Kappa, Summa Cum Laude graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, from which she received a BA in Medical Ethics (a major she designed, the first of its kind in any higher academic institution) and Political Science. She received her JD degree from New York University School of Law, where she was a Root Tilden Scholar. She studies classical ballet and cardio ballet and enjoys horse riding.

“My artwork traverses a journey to lightness, comprised of subtle palettes imbued with glints of gilded tones. Each piece implies movement, infused with buoyancy and sensation that diverges from a language of pragmatism and precision and uses tilt and tinge to evoke a sense of hope.
I look to endow the viewer with prospect and possibility through suggestive abstraction, entrusting that implication will arouse contemplation to enable unique flights into self-reflection and sentiment. I aim through my work to shift the mood as I produce the work, as I work with others to produce art, and as my art is viewed. 

I work in mixed media, including acrylics, metal leaf, and some unusual materials, such as mascara.
I have exhibited in museums, galleries, and other exhibitions in Austria, China, France, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.  

I also use art to empower and engage children in homeless shelters, survivors of domestic violence, refugees, and inmates at Rikers Correctional Facility. I led art programs in Kyiv with children who were bereaved by the loss of one or both of their parents during the war. I also worked with Syrian refugee children in Mount Lebanon, Lebanon, and I coordinated an exhibition of the children’s work in New York City, engaging volunteer docents from Christie’s. I led similar workshops in Aweil, South Sudan, with those served by the international humanitarian organization Concern Worldwide. One of the books I wrote, Creativity Connections: Wellness Through Artistic Expression (now in its second edition), explains how to use art to empower oneself and others.”
– Madeleine Schachter