KENNESAW, Ga. | May 13, 2020

Mickey Dunn is used to making adjustments.

As a college student, he played baseball and studied industrial engineering at Southern Polytechnic State University, all while working in North Georgia’s flooring industry between semesters.

He moved from engineering into the management field, eventually founding his own company while keeping a hand in the day-to-day operations of his plant. And he took the company he founded from manufacturing apparel to manufacturing safety features for cars.

Now he and his company, ML Industries, are making another adjustment. After nearly two decades of making airbags for cars, they’ve transitioned to making the personal protective equipment needed by frontline medical personnel.

“We’ve aggressively moved into manufacturing PPE, specifically facemasks and surgical gowns, and we’ve been able to get some of our people back to work to do this,” Dunn said. “We’ve got an order from Ford Motor Corporation to do about 500,000 surgical gowns, probably in Michigan since a lot of their assembly plants are there.”

“Our business is about saving lives,” Dunn said. “We’re just doing that in a different manner.”

In the latest edition of Inside the Nest, KSU Athletics spoke to Dunn about how his company has made the shift and reminisced with him about his time at KSU.

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A leader in innovative teaching and learning, Kennesaw State University offers undergraduate, graduate and doctoral degrees to its more than 45,000 students. Kennesaw State is a member of the University System of Georgia with 11 academic colleges. The university’s vibrant campus culture, diverse population, strong global ties and entrepreneurial spirit draw students from throughout the country and the world. Kennesaw State is a Carnegie-designated doctoral research institution (R2), placing it among an elite group of only 7 percent of U.S. colleges and universities with an R1 or R2 status. For more information, visit kennesaw.edu.