Stephanie Urchick, EdD Rotary International President 2024-2025

Stephanie A. Urchick, served as the President of Rotary International 2024-2025.

A Rotarian since 1991, Stephanie has participated in a variety of international service projects, including National Immunization Days (polio prevention) in India and Nigeria, the building of an elementary school in Vietnam, water filter installation in the Dominican Republic, and mentoring new Rotarians in Ukraine. Securing mammography equipment and a biopsy unit for a hospital in Poland was the district-wide TRF matching grant that Stephanie coordinated with the Rotary Club of Krakow. In its commemorative book, the Rotary Club of Krakow, Stephanie Urchick was noted as one of the agents helping foster 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.

With the world facing incredible challenges and international crises, President Urchick says Rotary’s leaders can offer a vision and a plan for addressing these. “Measures taken by Rotary leadership to survive and end critical challenges often make our organization stronger and more resilient for future events,” President 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 President 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 provide services, promote integrity, and advance world understanding, goodwill, and peace,” President Urchick says.

President Urchick’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.

President Urchick is a Rotary Foundation Major Donor and a member of the Bequest Society. President Urchick has served Rotary as an RI Director and Chair of the Board’s Executive Committee, a Foundation Trustee, Chair of the Rotary Strategic Planning and TRF Centennial Celebration Committees, member of the Atlanta RI Convention Committee, RLTI Moderator, International Training Leader, Regional Foundation Coordinator, President’s Representative, District Governor, District Delegate and Member-at-Large for three Councils on Legislation, and as a member of various RI Committees and in many club, district, and Zone roles.

To learn more about Urchick, read her interview, irresistible Q&A, and vision statement, which outline her goals for Rotary.