A conversation about the early forces that shape who we become.
Hidden Foundations is a long-form interview series hosted by Kendall Schoenrock, created to explore one central question: What are the hidden forces that shape resilient, ambitious, high-performing people? This show looks beneath the surface of success.
Not just what guests have built, achieved, or overcome, but where those traits first came from. The childhood home. The dinner table. The pressure. The support. The scarcity. The conflict. The love. The responsibility. The moments that quietly became an adult operating system.
Previous Guests
Meenal shares how her son’s severe food allergies led her into researching allergy prevention, the microbiome, and early allergen introduction to help families access practical, science-backed solutions.
Former MLS player Kortne Ford reflects on how childhood trauma, devastating loss, career-ending injuries, and faith forged the resilience that carried him through professional soccer and life after retirement.
Andrea Desy Edrei shares how growing up around family business negotiations and overcoming a major ACL injury shaped her approach to leadership, resilience, and relationship-building today.
Why Kendall
started the show:
Kendall Schoenrock is an entrepreneur, investor, father, and lifelong student of what actually shapes high-performing people. Professionally, Kendall has built, operated, and invested in companies across technology, real estate, and long-term systems.
He began as a tech entrepreneur, raised institutional capital, built companies in Philadelphia, and later returned to the Midwest to help grow his family’s commercial real estate business.
But Hidden Foundations did not begin as a business idea. It began as a personal question. As the father of two daughters, Kendall started asking: What truly creates resilience? Ambition, emotional strength, grit? Especially in the people we later call successful? What can he pass onto his daughters?
The conversation:
This is not a promotional interview or a polished success story. It is a conversation about the story underneath the story.
Kendall may explore your childhood home, early adversity, family expectations, money conversations, sibling dynamics, conflict, resilience, leadership, and the lessons you hope to pass on. The tone is curious, direct, vulnerable, and respectful, with room for reflection, nuance, and imperfect answers.
Who were you?
The childhood environment, family dynamics, and early experiences that shaped you.
Who are you?
How those patterns show up today in your leadership, work, relationships, and parenting.
Who is next?
The lessons, values, and legacy you hope to carry forward.
Why your story matters.
Hidden Foundations is building an archive of how greatness is shaped at home. Every guest adds another data point to a larger question: what actually creates resilient, capable, grounded people?
Your story may help a parent rethink how they show up at the dinner table. It may help a founder understand why they lead the way they do. It may help someone recognize that the hard parts of their upbringing did not define them, but they did shape them.
The hope is simple:
honest stories can become useful wisdom.