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The Foundation for Character Strength Investment (CSI)

Founder and Director: Dr. Thomas M. Brunner (PhD)

Dr. Thomas Brunner launched this Foundation in January 2009, after years of witnessing the ravaging effects of poor moral character on family and society.

The Foundation is developing cutting edge insight into how character strength (CS) in youth is best developed through intentional cultivation of specific moral, character, and leadership qualities to help children reach their potential.

Our cornerstone belief is that leaders with strong moral character are becoming more critical, yet less frequent. Our historical era is one where leaders have immorally exploited the financial or moral trust given to them by large collectives of society. Research inidcates confidence in leadership is at an all time low. Due to the frequency of moral misbehavior among even highly-educated people who have held high-profile positions, we are pivoting away from a belief that business success equals leadership/moral aptitude. Rather, leadership selection is more and more focusing on the core personality traits that have been left uncultivated, as there seemed to be hope that with technology, our society would naturally learn how to pick better leaders.

At their best, our children are beacons of light which penetrate and enlighten a world increasingly in need of leaders, who will shine via their “moral character lighthouse”. For this reason, the logo we are developing is a lighthouse image.

This Foundation is integrating the most advanced thinking from diverse human systems, including science and religion, fields that have yet to be fused. Through synthesization of leading theory from diverse fields, we are committed to building a unified model of human development which is sensitive to the developmental aspects of various maturational levels of leadership, morality, and virtue. This model will be designed to be evolutionary and sustainable, in that it will be open to ongoing input from advancing systems of human knowledge related to human character strength optimization.

We are currently obtaining grant sponsorship to fund our efforts. If you or someone you know may have insight into others pursuing a similar mission, or you wish to be added to our mailing list, please email Dr. Brunner at solutions@doctorbrunner.com. We welcome input from parents who may wish to contribute to our database by telling us about a resource or technique they have found useful for developing their child’s character strength and/or leadership skills.