Mettā
Loving-Kindness
We approach every community as one deserving of unconditional goodwill, not charity delivered from above, but solidarity offered among equals.
About the Mudita Foundation
Rooted in compassion. Grounded in community.
We are an Ohio-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit applying ancient wisdom to urgent human need, building resilience, restoring dignity, and ensuring that every dollar entrusted to us reaches the people it is meant to serve.
Our Guiding Philosophy
The four brahmaviharas
The name Mudita, meaning sympathetic joy, is not incidental. Every program we design, every partnership we form, and every decision our board makes is filtered through the four immeasurable qualities of the heart that the Buddhist tradition calls the brahmaviharas. These are not abstractions. They are operational commitments.
Karuṇā
Compassion
We respond to suffering with action through disaster recovery, healthcare access, and education because witnessing hardship without response is itself a choice.
Muditā
Sympathetic Joy
We take genuine delight in the flourishing of others. Our model is asset-based: we begin by celebrating what communities already are, not lamenting what they lack.
Upekkhā
Equanimity
We hold our work steadily across setbacks and successes alike, sustaining long-term commitment without the volatility of saviorism or the paralysis of despair.
Our Founders
Noble friendship in action
Ronald Leuenberger and William Hall are kalyana-mittas, noble friends in the truest sense of the Pali term. Bound by shared practice, shared values, and a shared conviction that the dharma is most alive when it moves through the world as service, they founded the Mudita Foundation to make that conviction institutional.
WH
William Hall
Founder, President & CEO
U.S. Army Veteran
MSW Candidate, CWRU
Holistic Therapist
William Hall is a U.S. Army veteran, holistic therapist, and nonprofit founder dedicated to building a more just and compassionate world. As Founder, President & CEO of the Mudita Foundation, he leads programs in education, healthcare access, poverty alleviation, and sustainable development, grounded in the belief that lasting change begins with community assets, not external intervention.
William is completing his Master of Social Work at Case Western Reserve University, with a focus on macro-level community practice and mindfulness-based approaches. His work draws on over seven years of military leadership, nearly five years of trauma-informed holistic therapy practice, and a long-standing commitment to Asset-Based Community Development as both methodology and moral stance.
RL
Ronald Leuenberger
Co-Founder & Director
Scientific Advisor
CHP
CSP
Ron Leuenberger is a Certified Health Physicist and Certified Safety Professional with over two decades of experience in radiation safety and regulatory compliance. As the Foundation's Scientific Advisor, he brings the same exacting standards he applies to protecting patients, workers, and the public to evaluating the evidence base behind our health and environmental programs.
Currently serving as Radiation Safety Officer at the Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center under the Veterans Health Administration, Ron oversees safety programs spanning nuclear medicine, radiation oncology, and medical research, a career arc that began at The Cleveland Clinic and has remained defined throughout by a steadfast commitment to serving others.
Radiation Safety Officer · Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center, Veterans Health Administration · 2010-present
Previously: Medical Health Physicist, The Cleveland Clinic · 2004-2010
Certified Health Physicist
Certified Safety Professional
M.S. Environmental Studies, Gannon University
Together, William and Ron bring a rare combination of community-centered social work, nonprofit leadership, military service, and specialized medical expertise, united by a shared dedication to the proposition that serving others is not a profession but a practice.
Spiritual Guidance, Cleveland Buddhist Vihara
Ven. Bhante Pemaratana
Ven. Bhante Buddhadattha
Ven. Bhante Lankkhana
Our founders are active devotees and lay practitioners of the Cleveland Buddhist Vihara, where they sit, study, and serve under the compassionate guidance of the resident monastics. The Vihara is not merely a background affiliation. It is the living wellspring of the Foundation's ethical orientation and its animating spirit.
Our Leadership
Directors & operations
The Foundation is guided by a lean, purpose-driven leadership team whose expertise spans international field operations, civic technology, community social work, and institutional stewardship. Each director holds their role as an expression of service, not position.
DM
Darrik Maisey
Technology Systems Director
Oversees digital infrastructure, data integrity, and the technology systems that connect our programs across geographies, ensuring platforms serve transparency and accountability.
NS
Nilantha "Sam" Samarasekera
Director, Sri Lanka Operations
Our trusted envoy on the ground in Sri Lanka. Sam coordinates community liaison, site assessment, and government relations in the Chilaw region.
AH
Abigail Hall
Director of Organizational Affairs
Abigail Hall is a community-based social worker whose career spans program authorship, service coordination, and community engagement. She oversees governance documentation, board records, and compliance correspondence while applying her background in financial literacy and reporting to keep stewardship transparent and accountable.
Program design & management
Community services coordination
Community engagement
Financial literacy & reporting
Governance & compliance
Our Commitment
100% impact. No exceptions.
Our founders and directors make a firm and public commitment: every dollar raised and distributed by the Mudita Foundation reaches its intended community. This is not a marketing statement. It is a structural one, built into our governance, our financial controls, and our personal practice of non-attachment to institutional accumulation.
100%
Of all funds collected and disbursed reach intended communities.
Our founders and directors serve without compensation drawn from donated funds. Operational costs are covered separately, so your gift goes entirely where it is directed, to the children, families, and ecosystems in our care.
Our Method
Asset-Based Community Development
The Mudita Foundation practices ABCD, Asset-Based Community Development, a methodology that begins not with a deficit assessment but with a genuine inventory of community strengths. We ask what a community already has, skills, relationships, knowledge, land, institutions, before we ever ask what it needs.
This is not a grant-narrative convenience. It is the reason our programs hold. When communities are co-designers and co-owners of their own recovery and resilience, outcomes endure beyond the project cycle.
A Assets first
B Build from within
C Community led
D Development, not charity
Where We Work
Ohio & Sri Lanka
The Foundation operates across two primary program geographies, each chosen not by strategic mapping but by the pull of real relationships and real need on the ground.
Sri Lanka
Sippikalana Village, Chilaw
A small coastal community in Puttalam District devastated by Cyclone Ditwah in November 2025. Our programs prioritize children's education and school recovery, medical aid access, and mangrove ecosystem restoration in the Chilaw-Pambala Lagoon.
Northeast Ohio
Lake Erie Watershed
Freshwater and coastal wetland restoration across the Cuyahoga Valley and Lake Erie shoreline, including phragmites removal, urban wetland mitigation banking, and blue carbon credit development in partnership with regional community-based organizations.
Join the Work
Support a model built on trust, dignity, and long-term care.
If our approach resonates with you, the best next step is simple: help us keep resourcing communities with humility and consistency.