In her 56 years of service to the Catholic health ministry, Sr. Mary Rose McPhee, DC, has sustained a life-long passion for ministering to the poor and underserved. That passion, combined with a legion of significant accomplishments, brought her CHA's first lifetime achievement award.
Sr. McPhee entered her community in 1941, interrupting her nursing studies to become a Daughter of Charity. She has demonstrated service and leadership as a nurse, a hospital administrator, a visitatrix, a CHA board member, and a regional executive. She has served as the CEO of Mary's Help Hospital, San Francisco; DePaul Hospital, St. Louis; Seton Medical Center, Austin, TX; and Hotel Dieu Hospital, New Orleans. During her stint as the first executive of the West Central Region of the Daughters of Charity Health System, she organized a modernization program that centralized purchasing, financial programs, and management services for the seven-hospital region. Today she is executive director of Seton Cove, a not-for-profit interfaith center for spirituality rooted in Judeo-Christian beliefs.
As a mentor to many people in healthcare, she is known as a compassionate, humble executive who lives the Gospel values in her everyday life. In her role as a congregational leader, she was a catalyst for recruiting lay executives to top-level positions and for the development of management skills among many Daughters of Charity. A philosophy of "mission first, people always" characterizes all of her undertakings.