Our Founders: Cheryl, Jen, + Ellen

The 2025-2026 school year celebrates Bridge Boston’s 15th year as a public charter school! Our newsletters in the 2025-26 school year will focus on those who have helped to shape Bridge into the school it is today.

Where It All Started

Cheryl Alexander, Jen Daly, and Ellen Williams all had considerable experience with schools. Ellen had just finished a Masters of Education at Harvard, while Jen had worked years at Epiphany School where Cheryl had been a long time board member + board chair. Epiphany is a unique private school with the motto: “Together, we are a school that never gives up on a child,” and these women were ready to expand this notion even further.

In 2009, these 3 women came together to develop a Charter for a new school in Boston: one that would expand the ethos of the Epiphany school over 10 years of student life. There was a historic, rare opening for charters in Massachusetts at the time as well. While Boston City Schools certainly contained passionate educators and helpful programs, these women were on a mission to support the students who needed their wrap-around services the most.

Ellen, Cheryl, and Jen spent hours on an initial proposal around Ellen’s dining room table. This migrated into developing the school’s charter – which required “some 200 pages, that included things like curriculum for all 10 grades,” Jen explained. They visited many charter schools, had numerous meetings with the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, analyzed data, and learned a long list of regulations. While tiresome, this hard work paid off.

Start Growing

The charter was approved in February of 2009, giving Ellen, Cheryl, and Jen exactly 6 months to coordinate everything they needed to start a completely new school that fall. Ellen said, “We had to hit the ground running on all possible levels—hiring, insurance, supplies, curriculum, financial systems, fund raising. We had what felt like hundreds of decisions to make very quickly. It still seems astounding that Bridge Boston opened just months after getting the charter.” The adventure of opening a school kicked into high gear in the spring and summer of 2009. Despite the founders feeling as though they might’ve been shouldering the impossible, 80 families trusted a brand new school with their pre-kindergarten and kindergarten students that fall.

Love Is the Bridge

Cheryl, still an active member of the Bridge Boston Foundation Board, said, “We chose the name Bridge Boston as metaphor for uniting all Boston neighborhoods, serving all learning styles and needs, bridging parents' huge hopes for their kids to a bright future, and the leverage that education and optimism could bring to our shared city.” Her anecdote about our school name – one we’re proudly still wearing on uniforms and screaming at basketball games – shows us that we are currently living up to the goals that our founders set for us. To this day, Bridge students still originate from over the city, have their needs met at school, and experience the joy of learning at Bridge. 

Each year, Bridge added another grade of students, and every few years the school migrated. Bridge students are resilient: they’ve learned everywhere from a church basement, to a shuttered old school building, to just one classroom in another school, and another former catholic school.

On a panel at a 2008 conference in New Jersey, before Bridge Boston was even a dream, Jen Daly was asked what the most important ingredient for a successful school should be. She famously responded, “love.” Every staff member, family member, and student at Bridge Boston can confidently point to the love in Bridge. It’s in our curriculum, it’s scheduled into our calendar, it’s hanging on the walls in the atrium. Our founders were acting out of love through every step of their application, hiring, and location scouting, there’s love in the proposal and charter and foundation of our school.

As Bridge celebrates our 15th year, we extend immense gratitude to the founders whose ideas continue to impact our scholars every day.