Be a Builder

If you didn’t know Joe Prischak, I wish you had. His journey through life is pretty inspiring – from his very humble beginnings on a farm to his leadership of several successful plastics, tooling and manufacturing companies to his commitment to support Penn State Behrend School of Engineering to the creation of Africa 6000, and of course, to the launch of MoldMaking Technology.

But I’m not going to talk about all that; you can read that story here. What I am going to talk about is an aspect of Joe I never really thought about before.

Sitting in the pew at the funeral mass, celebrating Joe’s life and commending his soul to God, I heard the priest use the word “rock” during his homily to describe Joe – a rock with which things are built. Right then, it hit me: Joe was not only the founder of MoldMaking Technology (the MMT OG), he IS the “Build” of MMT’s “Engineer, Build, Maintain” tagline.

I knew Joe built molds, built companies, built a charity, built an engineering

program – he even built a racetrack. But during his funeral mass, I learned that Joe also helped design and build his parish church! I learned that his faith was his anchor to get him through life, especially the last 10 years as he suffered from shingles. His faith was the rock upon which he built a life and a family – inspiring him to build other people up. It was pretty much his life’s mission.

Joe helped build people up by offering them opportunities so they could build a fulfilling life for themselves—including me. As a young, newly-married 27-year-old woman, Joe gave me the opportunity to help him build one of his passion projects – a publication dedicated to his trade, a place where his community of moldmakers could share and learn.

I could never have imagined I would help to build a brand and a voice for a critical niche of manufacturing – or that the community would embrace the concept or me with open arms … and then continue Joe’s dream for what is now almost 25 more years! Joe helped build my career, which in turn, helped support my future family and my dreams.

So as I continue to help build the MMT brand (hopefully for many more years), I will never read that tagline without thinking of Joe. May You Rest in Peace, Joe – although I’m sure you’ll even be building up there😉