Stephanie Urchick is a member of the Rotary Club of McMurray, Pennsylvania, USA. She will serve Rotary International as president in 2024-25. She has been an Rotary International 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 travelled 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.
With the world facing incredible challenges, including the COVID-19 pandemic, disasters driven by climate change, and conflict in many regions, Urchick says Rotary’s leaders can offer a vision and a plan for overcoming these challenges.
“Measures taken by Rotary leadership to survive and end critical challenges often make our organization stronger and more resilient for future events,” Urchick says. “This kind of essential leadership also creates new levels of cooperation, even among rivals, when Rotarians pull together as people of action to serve and solve a crisis.”
Making regionalization a priority is crucial, says Urchick.
“Because Rotary operates in more than 200 countries and regions, it is vital to recognize that the organization has the potential to become more efficient and effective by understanding and reacting to how regional differences affect the way Rotarians work together to address providing service, promoting integrity, and advancing world understanding, goodwill, and peace,” Urchick says.
Urchick is partner and chief operating officer of Doctors at Work LLC, a consulting and training company. She holds a doctorate in leadership studies from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. She is active on numerous community boards and committees, and has been honored by organizations including Zonta International and the Sons of the American Revolution.
A Rotary member since 1991, Urchick has traveled to Vietnam to help build a primary school and to the Dominican Republic to install water filters. She studies several Slavic languages, has mentored new Rotarians in Ukraine, and coordinated a Rotary Foundation grant project in Poland.
Urchick has served Rotary in many roles, including as a director, Foundation trustee, and chair of the RI Strategic Planning Committee and the Foundation’s Centennial Celebration Committee. She currently serves on the Election Review Committee and the Operations Review Committee. She is a Rotary Foundation Major Donor and a member of the Bequest Society.
To learn more about Urchick, read her interview and vision statement, which outline her goals for Rotary.
Here is Her Vision and Goals Statement
I strongly support maintaining our current vision statement. There’s magic as people unite to create sustainable change. Those actions have global, community, and personal impact. We’ve seen progress toward this vision since its adoption. We must continue to support our vision with strategies and goals reflecting what we’ve learned over the past few years.
Together, in 2024-2025, let’s add 100,000 more members to our organization. Recruit new members and engage our current members with meaningful club experiences. Expand our North America innovative club advocate program globally for additional impact.
Together, let’s help each other become more adept at digital innovation by inviting clubs to virtual ‘chats’ with Senior leaders and 7-minute virtual networking sessions. Relevant information is shared and members see how readily one can engage and ‘connect’ with Rotary leaders and each other. It also shows how adaptive our organization has become. Let’s create a Rotary App. There’s no better way to spread the word about Rotary and its causes and to allow members to engage with Rotary and support it by donating to The Rotary Foundation.
Together, let’s encourage members to serve others through their vocations, education, and skillsets by establishing a mentoring and coaching program for Rotarians and Rotaractors.
Together, let’s finally eradicate polio. The world relied on expertise in our Polio program to assist medical experts to reach isolated areas when COVID hit. Now let’s get COVID experts on board to help individuals understand the relationship between vaccine and disease prevention, and to assist with the eradication final drive.
Together, let’s extend continuity with our participants on programs that have proven results, including empowering girls, world leader meetings, and public-facing events. Success breeds success, and while members must embrace transformation in order to grow, building on accomplishments is a great motivator. Our power is our people.