Women Leaders Association Names Lisa Reilly Boston Coaching Partner
The Women Leaders Association has added Lisa Reilly, a longtime biotech industry executive, as the newest Coaching Partner for its Boston chapter, expanding the local roster of vetted professional coaches to three. The announcement, made Aug. 29, positions Reilly to work with high-performing women navigating career growth, burnout and questions of professional identity.
The Women Leaders Association describes itself as the largest publisher and events organization for women professionals in the country, citing roughly 43,000 members across more than 130 regional chapters. Its Coaching Partners program was designed to address a recurring complaint from members: that executive coaching, while valuable, is difficult to evaluate because titles in the field are unregulated and quality varies widely. Rather than leaving members to vet coaches independently, the association says it screens candidates for certifications, verifiable track records and client feedback before adding them to a chapter’s roster.
Reilly brings 23 years of experience in biotech and pharmaceutical leadership to the role. Most recently she served as a Thought Leader Liaison in neuroimmunology at Horizon, which has since been absorbed into Amgen, where she was selected for the company’s 2024 Leadership Development Program. Earlier in her career, she helped launch rare disease treatments at argenx, ranking in the top 10 percent of performers nationally, and at Alexion, where she took a territory ranked last in the country — 136th out of 136 — to a top-25 ranking within a year before making it the region’s top performer. She also spent eight years at Novo Nordisk, where she was recognized as one of the company’s “Women of Novo Nordisk.”
Drawing on that background, Reilly has developed what she calls the “Reclamation Method,” a coaching framework aimed at women who appear outwardly successful but feel depleted by the demands of sustaining that success. Her practice covers executive leadership development, leadership presence, burnout prevention, strategic decision-making, work-life integration and career transitions, delivered through one-on-one sessions and half-day intensive workshops. “I coach the woman who looks like she has it all together but feels like she’s running on empty,” Reilly said in a statement announcing her appointment, adding that her goal is to help clients’ success “actually feel like theirs.”
Reilly joins existing Boston coaches Susan Shepherd and Danielle Snow, giving the chapter’s members a choice of three specialists. Members can review Reilly’s credentials and book an introductory 30-minute call through the chapter’s website.
The addition comes amid growing demand for executive coaching services aimed specifically at women in leadership roles, a niche that has expanded alongside broader corporate attention to gender parity in management. Industry surveys have repeatedly found that women remain underrepresented in senior executive and C-suite positions relative to their share of the overall workforce, even as companies publicize diversity initiatives. Coaching programs marketed toward women executives have proliferated in response, though the quality and credentialing of such services varies considerably across providers, a gap organizations like the Women Leaders Association say they are trying to close through vetting processes.
The Boston appointment is part of a larger rollout in which the association plans to introduce Coaching Partners programs across its full network of chapters, pairing coaches with the professional makeup of each regional market. The initiative complements other association projects, including its Glass Ceiling Score, which uses data analysis to evaluate how fairly major U.S. employers promote women into management, and its chapter-level Best Women Employers rankings and annual Top 50 Women Leaders awards. Citing research from Pew and other organizations, the association notes that women continue to earn roughly 15 percent less than men on average, a disparity it says underscores the need for both structural transparency and individualized coaching support.
This report is based on a press release distributed via PR Newswire.
