Giuseppe Martinengo, Vice President of Operations
Giuseppe Martinengo joined More Good Foundation at the end of 2005, when he was invited to become the Content Director of the newly established organization. As Content Director Giuseppe was responsible for the initial creation and optimization of more than 100 websites in multiple languages. Those websites quickly started to impact positively the search results, displacing negative content, and many of them are still among the strongest websites owned by More Good Foundation.
In 2007 Giuseppe was asked to become Vice President of Operations, and oversee content creation, translations, and finance. He enjoys the great opportunity that More Good Foundation offers of being involved in spreading the message of the gospel around the world, helping people to know better the Church and eventually to join it.
Giuseppe has a truly international background. He was born and raised in Italy, where he joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1985, in spite of the opposition of his family and many of his friends. Giuseppe married Giovanna in 1987 and their first two children, Luca and Simon, were born in the following years. In Italy Giuseppe was not able to finish his college education since he had to work to support his family, but in 1992 he decided to move to Brazil to pursue new opportunities.
What he had heard about the amazing growth of the Mormon Church in that country was an important part of the decision to move. Giuseppe felt that there was a special purpose for him and his family to live in Brazil, even if it seemed a very strange idea to most of his relatives and friends. However, after a lot of thinking, planning, and praying the decision was made, and in June of 1992 the family of four arrived in Londrina, State of Paraná.
In Italy, Giuseppe had experienced what it means to be a pioneer in the Church, having to face constant opposition and misconceptions while trying to spread the good news of the Gospel among the people he knew. However, it was in Brazil where he had his greatest experiences with missionary work.
Starting the first week after his arrival, when he went to work with the full-time missionaries, until the end of the seven years and a half that they lived in Brazil, he and his wife were constantly involved in missionary work. As the ward mission leader of the newly created Antares branch, between 1993 and 1994, he directed the organization and implementation of a ward missionary program that included a strong participation of members, and that brought more than 150 people into the Church in a little more than a year, transforming the little branch in a strong ward. He was then called as the Stake Mission President and helped to implement the same program at the stake level, contributing to the creation of the second stake in the city of Londrina. In the beginning of 1997 he was called as counselor of the Marília Mission President, calling in which he served for three years, being released when the mission headquarters were moved to Londrina, a few months before he left for the United States.
While serving as a counselor to two Mission Presidents (one Brazilian and one American), Giuseppe had the opportunity of gaining a more complete vision of the work of the Church. He loved working closely with members, non-members, and missionaries, while traveling through the big mission for meetings, conferences, interviews, or other assignments. He believes that this constant involvement with missionary work in Brazil is the main reason for quickly learning the Portuguese language.
In Brazil Giuseppe was involved in various small businesses as an entrepreneur and manager. He was also the associate director of a non-profit organization, sponsored by several local governments, that promoted business ventures between Italian and Brazilian entrepreneurs. While in Brazil, two new children were added to the family, and Giuseppe was finally able to go back to school and receive a bachelor degree in Social Sciences by the State University of Londrina (UEL), where he was awarded a special diploma for having graduated with the student with the highest GPA among all the graduates of the year.
Sometimes in 1998, while going by car to a stake conference with the mission president and the Brazil area president, Giuseppe was informed by the area president of a scholarship program for international students, designed to help them with the costs of an MBA at BYU. Giuseppe felt that he should pursue that opportunity, and while still in the last year of college, he began studying English to pass the necessary tests (Toefl and Gmat) in order to be accepted in the program. He passed them at the first try, and in 2000 he was moving to the United States with his family.
Giuseppe obtained his MBA in 2002, and then started working as controller and HR director at 10xMarketing, a start-up internet marketing company. In 2004 he realized that to be involved only with work was not enough fun, and then he decided to add more to his schedule, and went back to school (part-time), to pursue a PhD in Marriage, Family and Human Development, which he obtained in 2007.
Working for the More Good Foundation, Giuseppe does not have enough time for scholarly work, but since he graduated, he had the opportunity of publishing several journal articles in the work-family area, and teach marriage preparation courses.
