Partners in Success: A Spotlight on John Marinucci

IN THIS ISSUE: JOHN MARINUCCI

The Canadian welding industry is facing a critical shortage of welding professionals. The future of the industry depends on attracting young people to the trade, removing barriers for underrepresented groups to access pathways to training, and supporting their success. This effort is more than one organization can handle alone. That’s why the CWB Welding Foundation works with industry, education, government and other stakeholders to identify and pursue solutions. Our partners are essential to the work we do, and we deeply value their commitment, advocacy and leadership. In this special WELD feature, we will be profiling some of those partners who actively champion the Foundation’s mission.

ABOUT THE MARINUCCI FAMILY FOUNDATION – CWB WELDING FOUNDATION AWARD

In 2015, the CWB Welding Foundation, with the Marinucci Family Foundation, created an award geared toward making a difference in Canadian welding education at the secondary school level. This grant supports a select group of disadvantaged high schools across Canada that offer full-time welding programs. The Marinucci Family Foundation Award is a pledge totaling $550,000, payable over 10 years, funded equally by the Marinucci Family Foundation and CWB Welding Foundation, providing 11 schools across Canada with $5,000 dollars annually for ten years. 2019-2020 is the fifth year of the pledge.

John Marinucci, CPA, CA, ICD.D., HRCCC, is the Chair of the CWB Welding Foundation Board of Directors, former Chair of the CWB Group Board of Directors, and Chairman and Founder of the Marinucci Family Foundation, a registered charity focused on funding education, live arts and proactive healthcare initiatives. Mr. Marinucci has held executive and senior management roles within a number of Canadian and US companies, and serves on several public and private company boards. He sat down with Rhea Gill, Marketing Communications Specialist with CWB Group, to talk about what led him to his involvement with the CWB Welding Foundation.

-Excerpt-

Rhea Gill: Can you tell us a little about the Marinucci Family Foundation gift to the CWB Welding Foundation?

John Marinucci: I first became involved with the CWB Group in 2003 and sat on their board for a number of years; I spent 12 years on the board culminating as the chairman of the board in my last number of years there. When I retired in 2015, one of our most significant contributions as a board was to create the CWB Welding Foundation in 2013.

In creating the foundation, there were a few things that we were trying to accomplish. In the past, we had been making sporadic contributions to welding causes, but due to the shortage and challenges plaguing the industry, we felt that we needed a more focused and dedicated approach, one that was suitably resourced to build awareness and address some of the burning issues facing the trades. With the CWB Group initially funding 100% of what the foundation required, I became the chair of the CWB Group and one of the nominees to serve on the CWB Welding Foundation, of which I am now the Chair.

Over time, as I became more intimately involved with the foundation and learned about the challenges in the welding industry, I had the opportunity to visit high schools because they’re a crucial focus area for the foundation to build awareness around the benefits the welding industry provides. This was an eye-opener for me because I realized how ill-equipped some high schools were in the delivery of weld education. This is what led me to understand what part of the foundation’s focus needed to be— we needed to act as an enabler to build awareness and create funding for a safe and well-equipped high school environment for students to learn about welding. Plus, many of these high schools lack the equipment to safely train students so we needed to focus on providing curriculum, welding supplies, equipment, safety training and manuals, Train the Trainer programs for teachers, and much more.

As I began to see the benefit and need for these high school programs, my passion for the foundation grew. When I retired from the CWB Group Board in 2015, I felt it was appropriate to make a significant contribution on behalf of the Marinucci Family Foundation given my involvement with the organization and the Foundation over the past 12 years and partly to set an example for others to make a significant pledge. The commitment was a long-term investment of $250,000 over ten years, which evolved to $275,000 where it stands currently and is matched by the Foundation, making it a total pool of $550,000 to help 11 high schools across Canada with funding operating and capital costs in delivering weld education.

The most important aspect of this pledge is to build awareness around the need to invest in students at the high school level for education around the trades. The Marinucci Family Foundation gift is also in place to set an example to generate funding from the community and to encourage them to adopt high schools, much like us to address the shortage that exists within the industry.

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