Get to know our Foundation Volunteer Leaders! Each month, the Foundation will feature its esteemed Board and Alumni Council members for you to get to know a little better. Below are some fun facts and a peek into what each of these board members do in their professional careers.

Mitch Dudley — Alumni Council (2022 – Present) 

Mitch serves on the Ball State University Alumni Council and has held his position since 2022. Mitch’s favorite thing about volunteering with the Foundation is the privilege of being able to attend many events across campus and around the community. He feels that it’s very important to represent the Ball State Alumni Association at events connected to the university and learn about the good that both the university and its alumni are doing by showing up and engaging with others who share a passion for Ball State.

He is currently working in banking as a Credit Officer at The National Bank of Indianapolis (NBI) and has been in banking since graduating in 2018. Mitch first started out as a credit analyst and then as AVP Commercial Banker at MutualBank (and its successor Northwest Bank) until the end of 2020 when he joined NBI and has been at NBI for nearly 4 years now and loves every second of it.

If Mitch could live anywhere, it would be Washington D.C. or DC adjacent. He would spend his time exploring museums, architecture, important buildings, and being in the presence of such history. He is a huge American History nut (specifically the American Civil War era) and believes there is just so much that happened in and around the DC area that he would never run out of places to explore. DC is also close (within an hour or two) to several American Civil War battlefields (Gettysburg, Antietam, all of the Virginia theater, etc.)

He is an avid runner and enjoys being outside exercising. If there is actual time off work, he enjoys traveling to various Civil War battlefields across the country and has visited several multiple times.

Mitch’s suggested book is The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara. Following the theme from the above, the book is about the battle of Gettysburg and the events and the people surrounding the battle. Not only is it a great read for a historical novel, it offers a lot of insight and points of view about the battle, the war, and life in general. The book was later adapted into his favorite all-time film Gettysburg.

 

Damita Williams — Foundation Board (2022 – Present)

Damita joined the Foundation board in 2022. She enjoys reengaging with the University in a way that will make a difference in the lives of future generations. Damita has been a nurse for over 40 years, starting as a pediatric nurse and moving on to Executive Nursing Leadership. She now uses those skills nationally while working for one of America’s most extensive Catholic Health Systems.

Her dream place to live is Texas, where she currently resides. There, they still get all the seasons, just a shorter version of the less-than-nice ones. In her free time, she enjoys vacationing with her family in the Caribbean. Damita and her husband want to visit all of the Sandal resort properties.

Damita’s list of books to read includes “The Way of the Shepard.” This transformative book opens your eyes to the power of relationships in your daily life.

 

Brian Geiselhart — Alumni Council (2021 – Present) 

Brian has been a member of the Ball State Alumni Council since 2021. His favorite activity while volunteering is transforming the university’s strategy to meaningful engagements with our more than 217,000 living alumni around the globe. As a member of the Alumni Council, he feels fortunate to have a front row seat to hearing about all the accomplishments the university has achieved while also understanding the challenges students, faculty, and staff face to accomplish their strategic goals. Reflecting on his own past experiences as a student and now alum within the business community allows him to bring creative solutions to how to best serve the alumni of Ball State.

Brian is currently the Executive Director, Asia Pacific Sales for Allison Transmission and based out of Tokyo Japan. They are a leading propulsion systems provider focused on the truck and bus commercial vehicle market as well as defense and off-highway end-markets.

Aside his current expat assignment in Japan, Brian also had the privilege of living in the Netherlands for a few years supporting his team within the Europe, Middle East and Africa region. If he had to pick one place to live outside the States it would be the Tuscany region of Italy.

When Brian is not traveling, he likes to practice Shotokan Karate. He was first exposed to this style of karate at the age of 5 and studied all the way through his early 20s, but ultimately stopped training because there was no Shotokan dojo in the Muncie area. With his relocation to Japan back in 2022, Brian figured this was the best time to relearn the art of Shotokan within its native country.

Seth Godin is one of Brian’s favorite business authors. One of his bestsellers is called “The Dip” which teaches you how to recognize the right time to quit something and when it’s the right time to persevere through a challenge. This short book applies to not just the business world but can even help in aspects of one’s personal life.