Anne O’Callaghan

Nearly 200 people filled a ballroom at the Hyatt Regency on Penns Landing on Saturday, October 30, to see Anne O’Callaghan, founder of the Welcoming Center for New Pennsylvanians, receive the first ever Mathew Carey Hibernian Award in recognition of her years of service to the region’s immigrant communities.

The award was presented by Melissa Hancock of the Mathew Carey Association, whose late husband was a descendant of Carey, an Irish immigrant from Dublin, an American patriot, and publisher. A protégé of Benjamin Franklin, Carey also founded the Hibernian Society for the Relief of Immigrants from Ireland.

The award was the first ever to be given by the Irish Immigration Center of Philadelphia—and at its very first fundraising gala. Wendell Young III, longtime union leader and a Welcoming Center volunteer, brought the house down with his introductory speech in which said, “Nobody says no to this lady. When she sets out to get a program done it gets done. Her husband Sean said no to her once and look what happened to him.” He pointed to O’Callaghan’s husband, who was sporting a bandage around his eye. The crowd roared with laughter.

Accepting her award, O’Callaghan said it was “absolutely beautiful and quite, I believe, undeserved.” She thanked members of her staff and her clients, then made reference to Young’s introduction. “You can always count on Wendell to stir things up.”

O’Callaghan, a physical therapist who emigrated from Ireland in 1970, founded the Welcoming Center, which is a centralized employment and resource center for immigrants, in 2003. Since then it has served more than 7,000 immigrants from all over the world. She also founded a software company that serves the home health care industry. She is active in the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill and sits on the advisory board of the Southwest Community Enrichment Center.