Early in life Dr. Mike Magee was an electrician’s apprentice with his older brother Bill (above), but as one of 12 children of a house-call making doctor, a medical vocation wasn’t long coming. Now, Mike is the founder and president of Positive Medicine Inc., a strategic health communications firm that works with organizations committed to the same home-centered health care his father provided.

Mike has long been a champion of patients’ rights and practiced as a physician for 13 years in rural New England before assuming progressive academic and leadership posts including senior vice-president at Pennsylvania Hospital, the nation’s first hospital, and founding director of the Pfizer Medical Humanities Initiative in New York City.

A descendant of Daniel Magee, who arrived in the U.S. from Derry in 1760, Mike has always felt a kinship with Ireland. Oh his first trip there 20 years ago, he recalls hearing galloping and looking up just in time to see a heard of horses disappear over a ridge. “At that moment,” Mike says, “I felt at home and at peace, balanced and content, holding my wife’s hand, and believing in the future.”

For Mike, that future means continual patient-focused healthcare, but also working on his new book which will recount 100 years of medical and insurance history through the eyes of WWII veterans.