Rotary International

Rotary International President

Stephanie A. Urchick

Stephanie A. Urchick

RI President 2024 - 2025
Rotary Club of McMurray
Pennsylvania, USA

Stephanie Urchick is a member of the Rotary Club of McMurray, Pennsylvania, USA. She will serve RI as president in 2024-25. She has been an RI director and Rotary Foundation trustee. She has served RI in numerous capacities, including as training leader, regional Rotary Foundation coordinator, and RI president’s representative. In addition, Stephanie was a representative and member-at-large to three sessions of the Council on Legislation.

Stephanie has also served as chair of the Rotary Strategic Planning Committee and The Rotary Foundation’s Centennial Celebration Committee, as well as a member of various Rotary committees, including the Election Review Committee and Operational Review Committee.

A Rotary member since 1991, Stephanie has participated in a variety of international service projects, including National Immunization Days in India and Nigeria. In Vietnam, she worked with clubs to help build a primary school and traveled to the Dominican Republic to install water filters. A student of several Slavic languages, she has mentored new Rotary members in Ukraine and coordinated a Rotary Foundation grant for a mammography equipment and a biopsy unit for a hospital in Poland. In its commemorative book, the Rotary Club of Krakow, Poland, noted Stephanie as a key figure for helping the re-birth of Rotary in post-Communist Poland.

Currently, Stephanie is helping to partner clubs and districts in the U.S. with Rotary clubs in Albania, Kosovo, and Ukraine for humanitarian and educational services.

Stephanie’s professional background is in the higher education, consulting, and entertainment industries. She received her doctorate degree in Leadership Studies from Indiana University of Pennsylvania and has been recognized and awarded by The Rotary Foundation and numerous community and international organizations.

History of Rotary International

The Rotary Club of Chicago, the world’s first service club, was formed on February 23rd, 1905 by Paul P. Harris, an attorney who wished to capture in a professional club the same friendly spirit he had felt in the small towns of his youth. The Rotary name derived from the early practice of rotating meetings among the offices of members.

The popularity of Rotary spread, and within a decade, clubs were chartered from San Francisco to New York to Winnipeg. By 1921, Rotary clubs had been formed on six continents. The organization adopted the Rotary International name a year later.

Along with the growth of Rotary, its mission expanded beyond just serving club members’ professional and social interests. Rotarians began pooling their resources and contributing their talents to help serve communities in need. The organization’s dedication to this ideal is best expressed in its motto: Service Above Self.

By July 1925, Rotary had grown to more than 2,000 clubs and an estimated 108,000 members. The organization’s distinguished reputation attracted presidents, prime ministers, and a host of other luminaries to its ranks — among them author Thomas Mann, diplomat Carlos P. Romulo, humanitarian Albert Schweitzer, and composer Jean Sibelius.

Find out more about Rotary by visiting the Rotary International web site.

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