In 1979, while attending seminary, John Molinaro realized that he had a different calling. Having grown up in a declining industrial town of 30,000, where many families had been reduced to poverty, he realized he had a passion for lifting up the economies of rural places and providing opportunities for struggling families to prosper. For more than forty years, Molinaro has pursued that calling, working across America to help small communities and rural regions build jobs and philanthropic resources that provide better lives for people who have been left behind and all but forgotten.
For twenty-seven years John focused his efforts on building prosperity in west central Minnesota where he helped double manufacturing employment and increase average weekly wages from lowest in the state to sixth among eleven regions. In 2006 he joined the Aspen Institute Community Strategies Group in Washington DC, where he helped rural and small urban places across America organize and adopt innovative and effective approaches to build local wealth and family and community prosperity.
In 2012 Molinaro left Aspen to serve as founding President of Appalachian Partnership, Inc., (API) the first-ever regionwide economic development organization serving the 32 Appalachian counties of Ohio. Over 8 years he built the organization into a multi-service economic development agency with 22 staff, 3 subsidiaries and a $4 million annual budget. By the time he retired from API in 2020, it had helped create more than 8000 jobs, and attracted more than $30 million in federal and state resources to help communities, businesses and families prosper. In addition, API’s Appalachian Growth Capital, LLC subsidiary has attracted more than $14 million in public and private investment in its loan pool to support growth of rural businesses and jobs.
On July 1, 2020, John started a new chapter, founding RES Associates, a consulting business focused on advising communities and regions on strategies they can use to build rural economic success, and on pursuing state and federal policy initiatives that support rural development.
Molinaro has served as a policy fellow at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, as a multi-term appointee to the Minnesota Governor’s Workforce Development Council, and as an appointee to the US SBA’s Council on Underserved Communities and the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland’s Community Advisory Council. John holds certifications in Economic Development Finance and Housing Development Finance from the National Development Council and a Master’s Degree is in Community and Regional Planning. He has also participated in advanced studies in theology, leadership and policy.
