Mary Williams named executive director of Beautiful People

Beautiful People, Orange County's largest adaptive youth sports league, recently announced that it has named Mary Williams as the organization's executive director.
Williams is succeeding Jan Brunkhorst, who is retiring after leading the organization since 2008.
Beautiful People is a community sports organization that provides adaptive baseball, soccer, basketball and cheerleading for children and young adults with developmental disabilities and physical challenges, ages five and up.
A community of athletes, parents and volunteers
Williams will work to expand Beautiful People's successful and growing adaptive sports programs, which currently reach more than 200 participating youth athletes across the region, and are facilitated by more than 100 volunteers from communities across the Orange County.
"Beautiful People is a true family, and our community of athletes, parents and volunteers deserve an executive director that can continue our tradition of caring, inclusion, and most of all - fun" said Peter Ladka, founder and chairman of the Board of Directors. "We could not be more excited about Mary joining our team, and look forward to reaching even greater heights under her leadership."
Prior to Beautiful People, Williams was the development director of the Town of Wallkill Boys & Girls Club.
As a senior member of the management team, she helped guide the organization, built relationships throughout the community and executed successful resource development strategies.
"Beautiful People is such a wonderful organization," said Williams. "I am grateful for the opportunity to work closely with our families, volunteers and generous supporters in order to help build a meaningful community for all those involved."
'The single driving force'
Brunkhorst had chosen to retire after serving as Beautiful People's executive director for the past decade.
She directed the growth of Beautiful People from a handful of baseball players and their families to a vibrant organization that operates soccer, basketball, cheerleading and track programs, along with a 160-player baseball league.
Brunkhorst also spearheaded Beautiful People's largest fund-raising program, raising more than $300,000 to build the Daniel Fratto Memorial Field, Orange County's only adaptive soft-surface baseball diamond, at Wickham Woodlands park in Warwick.
An addition to the family
"Jan has been the single greatest driving force behind the growth of Beautiful People, not only in our programming, but in the maturity and development of our organization as well," said Jeremy Havens, vice president of the Board of Directors." Everybody loves Jan. She's an amazing person and we're all going to miss working with her. Moving forward, we're very excited about working with Mary. She'll be a great new addition to the Beautiful People family."
- Roger Gavan