To better phrase an old axiom, it’s not such a big deal that who you know can open doors. But it’s life-changing and socially significant if who you know can open your mind and touch your soul.

When that happens and you charge forth, mountains may not be moved, but lives can be impacted, consciences awakened, and involvement inspired.

You have a list of people whose lives can be described in just such a manner? Wonderful. They likely are contributing reasons to the fact that our world has much goodness in it. But here’s another brilliant person whose name should be added – Susan Curtin.

Sifting through the depths of Curtin’s generosity and the dizzying array of her charitable concerns, one might search for a way to sum it all up. Or one could turn to Alison Walshe, the onetime LPGA player and elite collegian who has come to know Curtin well through their love of golf.

“With Susan,” said Walshe, “she gives back in a manner that hits home. She almost touches on everything with that competitive spirit that we see in her golf. It’s what drives her.”

Full disclosure: Curtin has been a friend for nearly 25 years and her prowess in the game we both love – she’s played in more than 10 USGA national events and has won seven championships on the Mass Golf and New England level – has been a source of admiration.

There is more, though. So much more.

We go back to those days when my Boston Globe responsibilities involved coverage of tournaments organized by Mass Golf and its legion of golf-happy officials, Curtin included. Where we truly connected, however, was at the intersection of Marvel and Wonder, aka the late John Mineck.

John was a mentor in different ways to the both of us. He challenged me to embrace the game from the inside out and to treat every story with respect; in Susan, John saw a woman of great substance within whom burned a passion to share her blessings in life with others.

“I think we both shared similar values,” said Curtin. “We both felt that we had been given certain opportunities in life and it was incumbent upon us to help people to have similar opportunities.

“It was never a question about giving back, and I feel that John was that bright example in front of me to show me how to do this work.”

That “work” of philanthropy and charity has been carried out with such brilliance and humility that Susan Curtin will be honored April 3 at the Francis Ouimet Scholarship Fund’s annual banquet. She will be presented with the Richard F. Connolly, Jr., Award for Distinguished Service and if ever a recipient felt blessed to have two magnificent pillars as mentors, it will be the woman who’ll stand before 2,500 guests and talk of her father, the late J. David Power, who was an icon, and Mineck, who was relentless in his support to those in need.

J.D. Power and Associates is one of America’s great business stories, a data analytics giant built in 1968 on the premise “that data and research, to have integrity, have to be separated,” said Curtin, who wasn’t born when her father quit his job and signed up quite the team to get his idea off the ground. The “Associates” were his wife, Julie, sons Jamey and Jonathan, and daughters Mary and Susan.

By the time Susan was a young teenager, she was very much one of the “Associates.”

“My father would bring me on business trips to the East Coast (the Power family lived in Westlake Village, Calif.). I’d sit in on meetings with the CEO of Mercedes-Benz and dad would include me in the conversations,” said Curtin.

Those are the sort of experiences that she took for granted when young but have fueled her passion for philanthropy as an adult. J.D. Power instilled in all his children this sense of responsibility, wanting first and foremost for all of them to be good community members. When the family business was sold in 2005, philanthropy became central to the worlds of all the Power children.

On Susan Curtin’s front, she is a partner in the Power Family Enterprises, and serves as the lead director for the Kenrose Kitchen Table Foundation. That foundation was started by J. David Power when he sold his company after 37 years. (The family grew up on Kenrose Circle in Westlake and it’s part of the Power legacy that everything of note happened around the kitchen table.)

That foundation provides grants to programs that help under-privileged children and supports the Multiple Sclerosis Society. (Julie Power died in 2002, having had the disease for years.)

After Susan and Mike Curtin navigated difficult waters with son Jack’s childhood health issues, they were inspired to help create the Cardiac Neurodevelopment Program at Boston Children’s Hospital.

“So many things people need in this world,” said Curtin.

Her passion to serve has been fulfilled at various time as a board member of the Ouimet Fund and Golf Fights Cancer and as an Executive Committee Member at Mass Golf. She has served as a Trustee of the College of the Holy Cross, where she played on the women’s golf team and continued a family history. (J. David Power, a Worcester, Mass., native, graduated from Holy Cross as did his father and one of Susan’s uncles.)

But nothing connects Susan to her father’s legacy quite like the role of being Chair at the National Coast Guard Museum Association. The goal of raising funds to complete a $100m museum to this “very under-recognized service,” said Curtin, is a daunting task, but one that is bringing out her philanthropic best.

“Dad’s experience in the Coast Guard was special to him,” said Curtin, recounting her father’s service to the Arctic Circle and his role in making Admiral Byrd’s mission a success. Left unsaid, for that’s her way, is the fact that she followed her father not only into Holy Cross but then served a four-year stretch in the U.S. Coast Guard Reserve.

Impressive, all this philanthropy, yet somehow, someway, her passion for competitive golf and for serving as an advocate for the women’s game remain important to who she is.

“It’s so cool to see,” said Walshe. “One of the great things about her is, she makes you think outside your own box.”

From such a vantage point, perhaps, you can see what Susan often sees. “Needs are so great,” she said.