It’s official, and unanimous: The Irish Cultural Centre has elected Martina Curtin as its new Board President. For the first time, a woman will lead the ICC. Of her qualifications, leadership skills, and business acumen, there is no doubt.

She succeeds outgoing President Seamus Mulligan, who has forged great progress for the ICC during his three years at the organization’s helm. He will remain an integral voice on the board in his new role as President Emeritus.

Curtin is the founder and guiding force of CHC Home Care, Inc., a Boston home-care agency whose mission is to allow clients to remain in their homes while receiving skilled medical care. The oldest of eleven children who grew up on a farm in Co. Clare, she embraced the tenets of home health care early in her life. “There was no room for error growing up with ten siblings,” she notes, “and it was always get up and get on with it, as my husband, Craig [Carlson], says, ‘in my direct but nice way.’”

  Some 20 years ago, she emigrated to the US to work in the field of health care. In 2009 she founded Curtin Home Health Care in Boston’s Back Bay. She had identified a need for patients and their families for better options at home. “I saw the mistakes that other agencies made, and I knew I could do this better....You meet families at their most vulnerable time. Their loved one is sick, and they’re going in 100 directions, and they just don’t know what to do.”

 With the help of her husband, she has grown her agency with an ever-increasing staff of basic personal-care assistants to registered nurses to end-of-life-care specialists.

Curtin has maintained a passion for all things Irish, as well as becoming a major force in local charitable endeavors. A member of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce and Irish Network Boston, she and her husband reside in the Back Bay.

 “I am very excited to be the first female president of the ICC,” he said, “and I look forward to continuing the tradition of organization and promoting Irish sporting, social, and educational events.”

 Said  Steve Burke, executive director of the ICC: “I would first like to thank Seamus for his dedicated service to the to the Cultural Centre....I am delighted that Martina was elected as his successor and look forward to working closely with her....Her election as the first female President of the ICC, particularly during this time of change, speaks to the ICC’s commitment to diversity and inclusion...”

Curtin believes that “goals are achieved through hard work, high standards, and surrounding yourself with good people.” Her proven record of doing just that does bode well for her in her new role in Canton.