The Zone 32 Nominating Committee met on October 6 and selected Marty Helman to serve as 2026-2028 Rotary International Director representing Zones 28 and 32. Her nomination, should there be no challenge per the Rotary International Bylaws, becomes official after December 1, 2024. She will serve on the Board of Directors beginning July 1, 2026. Please join me in congratulating Marty. Currently, Marty serves as Rotary Foundation Trustee, with a term that runs until June 30, 2026. She chairs Rotary’s Fund Development Committee and serves on the site selection committee for the new Peace Center in Asia....
Marty served as International Training Leader at the 2018 and 2019 International Assemblies and as Training Leader Support at the virtual 2021 Assembly. Many of us in our Zones know her from that time, and also because she was Trainer for Zones 28/32 in 2020 and 2021. She spoke in plenary at the International Assembly in 2024 and has presented in breakouts at the Atlanta, Toronto and Hamburg International Conventions as well as at the virtual 2021 Convention. She has been tapped multiple times as President’s Representative, and she is a frequent speaker at PETS and District events on the Rotary Peace Centers, The Rotary Foundation, and growth topics.
Marty served on The Rotary Foundation’s Peace-Major Gifts Initiative and its predecessor committees for six years, culminating in the chairmanship (2020-21). Earlier, Marty conceived of and chaired the Sakuji Tanaka Endowed Rotary World Peace Fellowship Committee, which raised $1 million for the Rotary Peace Centers, the largest sum ever raised by a Rotary Presidential fund.
Marty and her late husband Frank joined the Boothbay Harbor Rotary Club in 2003, and in 2012-13 she served as Governor of District 7780 in northern New England. That year, Annual Giving in the District rose 25 percent, and it increased another 33 percent while she was District Foundation Chair (2015-18). In 2017, Marty wrote and implemented the first online Grants Management Seminar in the Rotary world to be made available via RI’s Learning Center.
Marty has organized and supported Global Grants and, previously, Major Grants to provide humanitarian support around the world, including Louisiana following Hurricane Katrina. She has taken part in service projects and NIDs in Cambodia, Chad, Guatemala, India, Mali, Nigeria, Thailand and Uganda, and in 2008 she led a Group Study Exchange to the Philippines.
Marty is an Arch Klumph Society member, a member of the Paul Harris and Polio Plus societies, and she and Frank were charter members of the Legacy Society of the Rotary Foundation.
Marty served as president of the Otto and Fran Walter Foundation, a small humanitarian non-profit that inked a gift to The Rotary Foundation to fund a new Rotary Peace Center in the Middle East/North Africa region. The new Peace Center, which will be located at Bachesehir University in Istanbul, will matriculate its first students early in 2025.