Brian D. Molitor is the founder and chief executive officer of Molitor International, an award-winning company that has provided consulting, training, and coaching services to clients in North America, Australia, Europe, the United Kingdom, the Caribbean, and Africa for over 35 years.
He enjoys helping companies in the areas of leadership, team building, interpersonal relationships, communication, trust building, conflict resolution, reconciliation, and problem solving. Through his expertise in these areas, he has helped countless businesses and governments.
To help communities throughout the United States, he launched the “1000 Leaders” community development initiative, which impacts entire cities by training and empowering local leaders.
Brian works in the business world and speaks fluently in the language of business, but everything he says and does is informed by the deep foundation of his values and beliefs. His values are those of truth, tradition, and the American way of life. His beliefs are rooted in his Christian faith that maintains that there is value in every person and that every person has a God-given purpose. As much as Brian enjoys his vocation of educating and empowering people to do well in the workplace and in their communities, that isn’t the center of his heart’s passion.
Brian’s avocation, his real passion, is in God and his family and friends. It’s in the life that he and his wife of over 38 years, Kathy, have built on traditional American values. They have raised four amazing children and now are enjoying a growing flock of grandkids.
Brian and Kathy live on 170 acres of forest, ponds, and wildlife in beautiful Michigan. They enjoy seeing deer, turkeys, ducks, geese, and birds of all sorts just outside their large, family-room window.
Brian built nature trails throughout the property to enjoy and explore. He and Kathy delight in showing their children and grandchildren the joys of God’s creation. Brian taught all his children how to hunt and fish while teaching them personal responsibility, work ethic, and how to lead themselves and others. He and Kathy taught them how to appreciate the beautiful things in this life, starting with relationships and the priceless value of each person they meet.
With family being the most treasured of their assets, it grieved their hearts to see so many families fractured and fragile. Seeing fathers absent from their children and the children of those families growing up and making poor decisions because of the lack of strong fathers in their lives—these were tragedies that Brian and Kathy couldn’t ignore.
Driven by the Bible verse, Malachi 4:6, “He will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to the fathers,” Brian founded Malachi Global Foundation with a mission to provide fathers and other mentors with the information and inspiration to successfully lead the next generation into their God-given callings. Brian assembled a like-minded team that works passionately to fulfill the mission.
Malachi Global Foundation focuses on four main objectives. The first is the creation of books and study courses that teach the key principles of faith, fatherhood, and family. All of Malachi Global’s materials have special emphasis on parenting, mentoring, and rites of passage for today’s youth. His books, “Boy’s Passage, Man’s Journey,” “Mentoring Moments,” and the book he and Kathy co-authored, “Girl’s Passage, Father’s Duty,” are helping fathers, mothers, grandparents, and mentors to teach faith, values, and traditions to the next generation. Chock-full of effective tools and contagious hope, these books equip and empower others to guide and protect the children within their influence by leading them to maturity by design, rather than by default.
The second objective is the MITI (pronounced Mighty) Foundations for Success course, which was designed to prepare young people for purposeful, successful lives. When Brian learned of the plight of teens in foster care, and the dismal outcomes they experienced, he cleared his calendar for two years and created MITI to help give them, and other disadvantaged young people, a more level playing field. The course includes 60 hours of content that prepares young people for success in all areas of life and covers topics such as leadership, purpose, time management, entrepreneurship, public speaking, personal presentation, and much more. It is delivered to teens through churches, schools, and child caring organizations throughout the United States. The beautiful part about the way MITI is presented to young people is that it naturally fosters relationships between the adults who help facilitate the meetings and the young participants. The course has recently been taught to entry level staff in corporations, resulting in greater success on the job and greatly reduced turnover rates.
The third initiative of Malachi Global Foundation is to reach people through media. Three television series have been created, including TV4DADS, which has been translated into multiple languages and has reached audiences in more than 170 nations. Each series is intended to provide viewers with information and inspiration that help them live out their God-given potential to the maximum.
The fourth initiative involves conferences and retreats that teach attendees about faith, family, fatherhood, and inspiring the next generation to seek out their God-given purpose.
If you call Molitor International or Malachi Global Foundation, you’ll probably be speaking to Kathy Molitor. She is Brian’s partner in all his endeavors. She keeps the business, the nonprofit, and their family running smoothly in a beautiful rhythm that keeps stress and strife to a minimum, which allows for maximum creativity, peace, and joy in their lives.
Kathy was a nurse before she turned her attention fully to her family and their efforts to help others. When asked for her thoughts on the life that she and Brian have created for themselves, she said, “Life for me centers around our family. There is nothing that gives me more joy than nurturing the relationships of our grown children and their spouses, and our grandchildren. Keeping them covered in prayer, spending quality time with them when I can, encouraging them along the way, and teaching our grandchildren life skills fulfills me. When our family needs us, they know they can count on us to come alongside, no matter what they are facing.”
Brian and Kathy have a full life, which is enriched by quality relationships with family and friends. They are rocks of stability to everyone in their lives. And despite (or perhaps because of) Brian choosing to go into business rather than traditional ministry, Brian has ministered to people all over the world. When asked what he wished everyone knew, he said, “Life is all about perspective. If I made a list of all the rough spots I’ve been through and focused on them, I could get depressed. However, if I made a list of all the great things—my family, friends, travel, health, and all the amazing things I got to do, then I realize just how fortunate I really am. Gratitude comes naturally when you hold on to that mindset.”
Q&A
Do you have a favorite quote to share?This article was originally published in American Essence magazine.
