Attorney Melissa Proffitt’s enthusiasm, endurance benefit community organizations

Just reading attorney Melissa Proffitt’s long and varied list of professional, civic and philanthropic accomplishments can leave the average person feeling exhausted.

Proffitt has spent her entire legal career at Ice Miller LLC, which she joined straight out of law school in 1985. She made partner in 1992.

Today, she’s partner-in-charge of client relations, founder and chair of the firm’s Food and Agribusiness Group, and founder and chair of its Energy Group. She’s also responsible for the firm’s business development initiatives.

But that’s only the beginning. Over the decades, Proffitt has served on the boards of dozens of community organizations and helped with numerous civic events and Republican political campaigns. Her achievements include more than a dozen trade missions with Govs. Mitch Daniels and Eric Holcomb and former Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard and membership on boards such as the WNBA All-Star 2025 Host Committee, Indy Chamber (which she chaired in 2022-2023), the Greater Indianapolis Progress Committee, the Race and Cultural Relations Leadership Network and vice chair of the Indiana Black Expo.

Such a roster would make a fine addition to any resume. But in Proffitt’s case, it’s only a sample.

“I honestly don’t think she sleeps,” said Karen Ferguson Fuson, chair of the Free Press Indiana board, which Proffitt recently joined. “She reads and consumes information like no one I have ever met, and she pairs all that with so much face-to-face interaction. She sees needs and solutions so clearly, she brings people together to get the work done, and she measures results based on impact, not just on activity.”

For that tireless devotion to Indiana’s economic and social betterment, IBJ has named Proffitt the 31st recipient of the Michael A. Carroll Award, given annually to a man or woman who has demonstrated the former deputy mayor’s qualities of determination, humility and service. Carroll was among six people killed when two small planes collided over southern Marion County on Sept. 11, 1992.

‘His No. 1 choice for me’

Proffitt grew up in the Carmel and Noblesville areas, back when both were little more than wide spots in the road. And she came by her overwhelming drive—along with her interest in the law—quite naturally. Her father was John Proffitt, a managing partner at the Carmel firm Campbell Kyle Proffitt. She clerked at his firm and even entertained the thought of working there. But after graduating cum laude from Indiana University School of Law in 1985, she decided to pursue employment in Indianapolis. Her father supported her and wanted to hear all about the various interviews she took part in but never expressed an opinion about where she should go—until she picked Ice Miller.

“He indicated that there were a lot of great law firms in the city and a lot of great lawyers, but from a personality standpoint, Ice Miller was his No. 1 choice for me,” Proffitt said. “It was really nice to hear that.”

Her father was among a select group of people who inspired her, through his own civic efforts, to become deeply involved in the community. But there was more to it than that. Proffitt is also a people person par excellence, and for that reason relishes her formidable array of extracurricular commitments.

“I am always drawn to all the different amazing causes that these organizations spearhead,” she said. “They introduce me to new people and new information, so I gravitate toward them for those reasons.

“Also, and I think this is important, Ice Miller encouraged civic involvement and community service. So I had that support not only in growing up watching it at home with my dad but also professionally. So it was very comfortable and natural for me.”

Another thing she finds comfortable and natural is connecting people in disparate professions and organizations and helping them to find innovative ways to collaborate. And there are certainly plenty of opportunities, given that she currently sits on 13 separate philanthropic and civic boards.

“Melissa was incredibly helpful to me in getting me nominated to be on the Ivy Tech Community College Board,” said noted philanthropist Marianne Glick. “She introduced me to [former Indiana lieutenant governor] Sue Ellspermann and helped get the Legislature and the governor to make that appointment, even though I’m not a Republican.

“She really has a commanding presence about her. I remember thinking that this is a lady who gets things done. This is somebody I want to get to know.”

Making Indiana stronger

Her civic commitments have always been quite eclectic. But if pressed, Proffitt admits that, for the last 20 years or so, promoting economic development for both the Indianapolis area and the state at large has become her primary interest.

“I worked with the Indiana Economic Development Corp. and the Mitch Daniels and Mike Pence administrations and traveled internationally on a lot of trade missions,” she said. “And the Indy Chamber and Indiana Chamber have also provided me with opportunities. I really enjoy being involved with these organizations that try to make Indianapolis and Indiana stronger, better and a place where kids want to live and that talented people want to move to.”

When Greg Ballard was mayor of Indianapolis, she also accompanied him on trade missions to Brazil and Europe, among others.

One trip stands out for Ballard.

“We were in India for six or seven days, and her bags got lost,” Ballard recalled. “She wore my wife’s clothes, and they kind of switched off for four days or so, until her bag showed up. She’d kill me for saying this, but [once her bag was returned], she wore like three outfits a day because she wanted to wear all the outfits she brought.”

As with many such excursions, Proffitt went along as a representative of the Indianapolis and Indiana business communities, often in support of initiatives that jibed with her areas of expertise at Ice Miller. Shortly before they traveled together on an IEDC-sponsored trip to Taiwan and Japan, she met Kip Tom, chair of Tom Farms in Leesburg. During the Daniels administration, he served with Proffitt on the IEDC board. The two of them worked together on a number of agricultural initiatives during the early 2000s.

“I’ve spent time with her over the last 20 years and consider her a friend,” Tom said. “She has a service heart, and she’s willing to give and not expect anything in return. It doesn’t matter if it’s for industry or agriculture, for Indiana or the city of Indianapolis or for one of the philanthropic organizations she serves with. She just wants to do what’s right for everybody.”

Frenetic fun

Given her busy schedule, it doesn’t hurt that Proffitt is legendary for her enthusiasm, organizational acumen and iron endurance. Those are skills she put to use when she was called in to help Ballard staff up after he unexpectedly won the Mayor’s Office in 2007.

“She was a huge, huge part of that early transition,” Ballard said. “I don’t think she even had a title. I don’t think anybody did. But she knew a lot of people who had worked previously in different administrations, and she was able to help them find their way into mine.”

Proffitt refers to those frenetic early days of the Ballard administration as “fun”—in part because it was, once again, a chance to learn new things and meet new people.

“I had to learn for the first time about city government, what positions needed to be filled, what the positions entailed and then try to connect people with those positions,” Proffitt recalled. “We had about a three-month period to try to convince people to leave good-paying jobs that they were happy with for jobs with less than half the pay to serve a mayor that they’d never met before. And it was a blast.

“I had so much fun. And some amazing leaders came out of that administration. Now almost all of them are in the private sector and have a great impact on the city.”

Indeed, when Proffitt spoke with Troy Riggs about becoming the city’s public safety director, he mentioned an organization he founded in Corpus Christi, Texas, that used area philanthropic groups to bolster public safety efforts. Proffitt decided Indy needed something similar and helped found (and served as the first board chair of) the Indy Public Safety Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to enhancing public safety and quality of life in Indianapolis using philanthropic support for the city’s public safety agencies.

“I deeply appreciate Melissa’s painstaking work to set up IPSF for success,” said Jeff Harrison, president and CEO of Citizens Energy Group, who currently serves as the foundation’s board chair and has worked with Proffitt many times over the years. “She’s fun, smart, very focused, relationship-driven and wants nothing less than the very best for our community. It’s hard to find someone in Indianapolis—or the state of Indiana—more civically engaged than her.”

Digging in

Proffitt makes a habit of referring to what many would consider horrific anxiety triggers—meeting new people, tackling a jam-packed schedule under tight, unforgiving deadlines—as “fun.” But it might be less fun if she didn’t keep a tight rein on her schedule. A couple of times each week, she begins her day with a breakfast meeting at Café Patachou at 49th and Pennsylvania streets, where, while typically dining on scrambled eggs with cheese and jalapeno, she confers with everyone from legal clients to civic volunteers.

She then heads downtown to the Ice Miller office, forgoing the chance to work even a couple of weekdays remotely. The inveterate people person dislikes the idea of telecommuting so intensely that she even found a workaround during the pandemic.

“My secretary and I got a special dispensation to come to the office every day because we were the only ones there,” Proffitt said. “I love my home, but I don’t want to work at home. I love getting out and being at the office around people.”

Michael Huber, vice president of university relations at Indiana University, got to watch Proffitt work her organizational magic during COVID’s early days, when the lockdown brought much of the Hoosier economy to an abrupt halt. He was president of Indy Chamber at the time, and Proffitt was a board member.

“Melissa was really instrumental in helping the organization,” he said. “Almost overnight, the Indy Chamber became a seven-day-a-week small-business lending and services organization. In 2019, the organization did just under $3 million in small-business loans. In 2020, it was something like $22.5 million.”

“She is someone who will dig in and really get into the weeds with a problem,” Huber said. “Through sheer force of will but also with an intense amount of real empathy, she will help you. She doesn’t tell you what to do. She digs in and helps you understand all the different alternatives.”

No slowing down

Given all of her commitments, Proffitt’s workday rarely ends at 5 p.m. Evenings are often occupied with meetings with clients or board members or with political events. On Sundays, she typically spends three or four hours catching up on board work. She has two full-time legal assistants, one who deals with her legal practice and one who handles board work, political involvement and calendaring, among other things.

“I try to do nothing on Saturday, other than manage my personal life,” she said.

That personal life includes her husband, surgical oncologist Dr. Tom Schmidt; his three children from a previous marriage, John, Mary and Ann; and Proffitt’s own kids, Madeline, Nicholas and Samantha. Proffitt and Schmidt travel regularly and are planning a family journey to Africa this winter.

Though someday Proffitt might want to start ratcheting down the number of projects she juggles, it’s definitely not this day.

“Teresa Lubbers, who’s one of my dear friends, has always advocated picking one or two things, devoting all your energies to them and moving on,” Proffitt said. “But I really love the diversity of the various organizations I’m involved in. It allows me to get to know some really amazing people.”

Lubbers met Proffitt 34 years ago when she was part of one of the first classes of the Richard G. Lugar Excellence in Public Service Series, an organization Proffitt would go on to chair. She said Proffit has a special ability to bring talented people together for both work and fun and called her a “convener of friends.”

“Anyone who is fortunate enough to call Melissa a colleague or friend knows that she never slows down,” Lubbers said. “The reason she’s been asked to lead so many organizations is because she does it so well. She’s always looking for a way to get to ‘yes’ and refuses to accept that the status quo is good enough.”•