About Michael Molinaro

Michael Molinaro is chief learning officer of New York Life, a Fortune 100 company founded in 1845; the largest mutual life insurance company in the United States, with more than $1 trillion of in-force life insurance and one of the largest life insurers in the world. New York Life will be celebrating its 175th Anniversary in 2020. 

Molinaro joined the firm in 2009 as its first ever chief learning officer, and through his tenure New York Life has been consistently ranked in the Training magazine Top 125 list for best practices in learning and development, and well as the “Gold” category in Chief Learning Officer magazine’s Learning Elite listing. 

Notably, and most recently, New York Life was ranked No. 1 by ELearning magazine’s 2019 list of Top Company’s for learning and development.

Prior to joining New York Life Molinaro spent 12 years in London where he was head of learning for Deutsche Bank in the U.K. from 1997-2005 and was U.K. head of learning for UBS Investment Bank from 2005-2009.  

Before holding these roles, Molinaro was North American head of learning and development for Reuters. He has also held senior learning and organization development roles at AIG, Citibank-Smith Barney, Shearson Lehman Brothers and Drexel Burnham Lambert.   

Molinaro has also acted as an independent consultant and coach to Fortune 100 companies in the United States and Europe. He is the editor of the widely used text “How to Design Self-Directed & Distance Learning.” He has written and contributed to several papers on the topics of executive coaching, leadership development, and organizational culture. 

His most recently published work is “Being on One’s Way; The Path to Leadership,” published in May 2018 by the International Journal of Appreciative Inquiry. 

Molinaro is also proudly a founder of what is now the largest Little League baseball program in Western Europe.  

Molinaro lives in New York City and Barnegat Light, New Jersey.