Our Founders: Jane and Eileen

Two twenty-somethings had an idea. Then, they changed Boston forever.

 Jane Alexander & Eileen Reilly met while working at an overnight homeless shelter in Boston.

They were alarmed that women had to leave the shelter each morning without having a dedicated safe space in the city. Together, Jane and Eileen formed a vision for a daytime community where women could relax, nourish themselves, and enjoy a supportive, nonjudgmental environment.

Although they were only in their mid-twenties, Jane and Eileen set out to find funding, volunteers, and a building in which they could manifest their idea. The rest is history.

Decades later, Women’s Lunch Place has evolved to offer nutrition, direct care, wellness, and individualized plans of action to each woman that turns to us for help.

Jane Alexander

Jane served as Executive Director of Women’s Lunch Place for our first 20 years. She led with a philosophy that prioritized recognizing and expressing the dignity of each WLP guest. Under her leadership, WLP began to take shape as a multi-service agency supporting individualized pathways forward. She recruited and inspired volunteers, collaborators, and philanthropists across the city.

Jane's drive and vision changed the lives of hundreds of people who spent time at Women's Lunch Place over the years.

She instituted rituals that still stand today––like celebrating the birthdays of our guests each month with gifts and cake––which humanized vulnerable, isolated women. Jane was active in the Coalition for the Homeless and received many awards throughout her career, including the Mount Holyoke College Mary Lyon Award and the Boston Celtic’s “Heroes Among Us” award. In 2022, Jane passed away, and her life was memorialized in the Boston Globe.

From the Boston Globe:

(2022) Ms. Alexander “was very talented,” [Eileen] Reilly said. “She didn’t have any business experience, yet she was able to develop Women’s Lunch Place as a nonprofit. She gathered together a board of directors. She knew how to fund-raise and write grants. She just figured it out. I would think, ‘How does she know how to write grants?’

(1991) “These women are so precious,” says Jane Alexander, the director of the Women’s Lunch Place. “These people teach us how we need to be human with each other,” and how to create new communities when old communities reject or isolate us.”

Eileen Reilly

In the early 1980s, Eileen Reilly was working at a research lab and spending one night each week at Pine Street Inn in Boston. In Pine Street’s clinic, she treated infected wounds, frostbite, epilepsy, and many other emergency medical needs. Eileen originally wanted to go to medical school to become a primary care doctor for people experiencing homelessness, but once she saw the severe psychological issues that her homeless patients were grappling with, she switched to psychiatry.

Eileen has now cared for Boston’s homeless population for over 40 years and is still doing this work today. She is a clinical psychiatrist with the Department of Mental Health, as well as a longtime member of Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program’s Street Team. Eileen continues to support Women’s Lunch Place as both an indelible member of our Advisory Committee, and through her role at DMH, working two shifts each month in our community. 

From Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program (2018):

When you meet Eileen, you can understand how her soft spoken and caring demeanor is appealing to our vulnerable street patients. She says her initial engagement with patients is very casual and conversational. “How are you doing today?” “Is there anything I can do for you?” she might ask someone sitting on a park bench. Eileen calls engaging those living on the street an art, for behavioral health care in particular, and says you have to, “know when to back off and know when to be pushy. And the longer you do it, the better you get.”

Just as Jane and Eileen manifested their early vision for Women’s Lunch Place, you can ignite change as a WLP Young Professional. Carry on the tradition of youthful leadership and directly support our work through volunteer and social events throughout the year. Learn more here.