The Origin Story of Master of Business Leadership Global Academy

My name is Phil Johnson. I’m the founder and CEO of Master of Business Leadership Global Academy. Its story began long before the Academy had a name.

I was born on December 1, 1953, in Brantford, Ontario, six weeks premature and weighing about four pounds. I spent my first six months in Brantford General Hospital. My father, who didn’t own a car, rode his bicycle to the hospital each day to bring me milk.

I was the youngest of three boys. We grew up sharing one bedroom in a 900-square-foot bungalow with a coal-burning furnace. There was no air conditioning or television. An old tube radio was our entertainment.

My parents born in 1908 and 1909 had each left school after Grade 8. My father worked in a factory and had served as a sergeant in North Africa during the Second World War. My mother was a factory seamstress before leaving her job to raise us. They worked hard and made a life for our family with what they had.

School was difficult for me. I have dyslexia, though I didn’t know it at the time. I failed Grades 3 and 5 and was labelled a slow learner. I would sit in class hoping the teacher wouldn’t call on me, afraid to make eye contact. Some days, the back of my shirt was soaked with sweat by the time class ended. A “C” felt like an achievement; I couldn’t imagine earning an “A.”

Outside school, I learned to work early. At nine, I pulled copper wire from factory dumpsters and sold it for five cents a pound. That was my allowance. I shovelled neighbours’ driveways in winter, loaded produce into boxcars, caddied at a golf course and picked strawberries on a farm.

Then, when I was 14, my mother died of breast cancer. It was December 3, 1967, two days after my birthday. Her death shook me more deeply than I understood at the time.

About a month later, on a snowy January night, I took my dog Duke for a walk. He was a Blue Tick Hound my parents had given me when I was about five. It was close to midnight when we stopped behind a neighbourhood factory. Standing there, I made a promise to myself: I would find out what was on “the other side of the hill,” then come back and help others.

I couldn’t have explained that promise fully at 14. I only knew that the pain I was carrying had to lead somewhere.

The following year, I received an award as the most improved student in my grade school. I went on to become an “A” student. My father died in May 1974, as I was finishing high school. Four years later, I graduated near the top of my class from McMaster University’s business school. I paid my way through summer and part-time work, with help from a partial scholarship available to children of Second World War veterans.

I later spent five years studying electrical engineering at Humber College while building a career in the semiconductor industry. Over two decades, I became a corporate executive, travelling roughly 60,000 miles a year across North America and the Pacific Rim.

By many measures, I had succeeded beyond anything my younger self could have imagined. Yet in 1990, I remember asking one of my older brothers, “Is this all there is?”

I had reached for the brass ring and found that holding it did not bring the fulfilment I expected. Eventually, I turned down three vice-presidential opportunities and left my corporate career to create Master of Business Leadership Global Academy.

That decision brought me back to the promise I made beside Duke on that snowy night. I wanted to understand what helps people move through fear, develop trust and lead in a way that brings out the best in others. I wanted to share what I learned.

For more than 25 years, MBL has helped develop leaders across industries and cultures. Today, its alumni live in 19 countries. Over the past year alone, MBL alumni have generated more than $60 million in client-documented revenue growth.

I think often about the boy who was afraid to be called on in class, and the 14-year-old who stood behind a factory wondering what lay beyond the hill. I’m grateful for the people who have joined me on this journey and for the chance to keep the promise I made on that snowy January night 57 years ago.