Jane Reynolds practises what she preaches : life is for living and living to the full. As a woman in a distinctly man’s world, the chief executive of the RMBI is very much her own person, possessing an elegance of enthusiasm and vitality, readily admitting to both working and playing hard, devoting anything up to 70 hours a week, including many weekends, to a job she describes as “a way of life”.
    From an office overlooking Grand Lodge in Great Queen Street, Jane Reynolds shoulders the responsibility of “spending £22 million of other people’s money” each year on the running-costs of the organisation, as well as having additional money for capital projects, spending a considerable amount of her time travelling throughout 20 different locations in the British Isles.
    She is the first woman to hold this post and believes she is the first woman world-wide within recognised Freemasonry to have a position of some status. The Hampshire-born Winchester County High School for Girls old girl compares her role to that of an orchestra conductor: “It comes back to me to make sure that all the instruments are making the right noise at the right moment, and the sound we produce together is a pleasing one.” The 44 year old chief executive feels it is very dangerous for anyone in her type of job to develop “bunkeritis”: “It would be easy to sit in this rather nice office in this lovely part of London and think I know everything that is going on out there but seldom venture out. I desperately want to be able to hear from people, staff, residents, almoners, people in the Fraternity, what they think we should be doing, how they think we are doing, in order to do a good job even better. So I visit all the homes regularly.”
    The Institution she heads faces a daunting challenge. It must provide a comprehensive range of services to meet the needs of an increasingly large number of older Freemasons and their dependants, providing residential and nursing care, regular financial help, advice and support, home-improvement loans and holidays.
    Her philosophy that there are only challenges and never problems has obviously stood her in good stead. For some perhaps, an insur-mountable problem would have been the fact that Freemasonry has always been a masculine bastion. Jane Reynolds has been more than a match for this challenge, though she did admit to a sense of foreboding on one occasion. “When I joined the organisation, the people who apppointed me thought that I would never be required - or even welcomed - in gatherings of Freemasons, because obviously I am not a Freemason, but they were proved wrong, and I am sure they were delighted to have been proved wrong, for I have been made hugely welcome. I always feel the most amazing sense of privilege as well as pleasure when I do have invitations like that. I think it is right to say that I am the first woman who has ever actually been in Grand Temple to ‘hold forth’ - and believe me, as the only woman surrounded by 1,800 men in that sort of situation, the walk across the squared pavement is the longest walk in the world!” The occasion referred to was a meeting of the Provincial Grand Lodge of Essex. “I was ‘smuggled’ in then, because nobody knew I was coming, and it was to be a surprise. It certainly was! I will always remember it.”
    Destiny dictated she was to be chief executive of the RMBI some six years ago. Prior to that she had been head-hunted to go to London to set up Central London’s first short-stay home for people with mental or multiple disabilities, created by three charities working together. From there she became development officer and subsequently first director of Westminster Mencap, and then went into the National Health Service to run Leavesden Hospital, Hertfordshire, at the time the second largest hospital in the country for people with a mental handicap.
    When a new chief executive was being sought for the RMBI, recruitment was handled by Price Waterhouse, who produced an anonymous advertisement saying only that a major national charity was seeking a new chief executive. “The advertisement was appealing” she recalled, “so I rang up and said ‘which is the charity?’ because there are some charities I would not want to work with. I was told it was the Royal Masonic Benevolent Institution, at which point I said ‘Oh right, fine, end of conversation. They obviously won’t want a woman.’ ‘No’ said Price Waterhouse, they wanted the best person for the job, and they were perfectly happy to receive applications from women; they said my career might be of interest and I should write in.”
    Was she apprehensive? “I suppose I wondered. All my friends had teased me...roll up your trouser-leg, you know! I didn’t expect those Freemasons to have little horns coming out of the top of their heads or be anything but the governing body of a major charity who were conducting an interview. One has to overcome that sense of dis-appointment at best, or resentment, from those who aspired to the job.”
    She has just celebrated 27 years in public service, musing that it made her seem “like Methuselah”, looking over a career filled with attention to people with learning disabilities and people with physical disabilities, as well as “people with a super-imposed psychiatric illness.”
    She originally intended to be a probation officer, but was too young to do the training straight from school - she had successfully passed her 11-plus examination at the age of nine - “So I would have a long time to wait until I was old enough to do the probation officer training. I wanted to use the time for things which would help me with my application to a college, and I landed up working with people with a mental handicap. I liked it so much that I dropped all thoughts of becoming a probation officer. What is curious is that I am a magistrate now and, of course, I am quite involved with the probation service, albeit from the other side of the Bench.” Jane has been a magistrate for the City of London since 1991, about the time she joined the RMBI, “so the learning curve that autumn was pretty sharp, having all the training as a magistrate alongside getting to know the complexities of this wonderful organisation.”
    She is a firm believer in delegating responsibility as much as possible, “I am blessed, or the organisation is blessed, with people who are absolutely terrific at their jobs throughout the organisation.”
    Her job is “mainly management” but the icing on the cake is public-relations. “It is a very dynamic organisation. We never rest on our laurels. The organisation was founded some 145 years ago but there are many challenges ahead of us.” Her dream is to enable all the members of “the wonderful masonic family to get all the help they need in the right way, in the right place, at the right time. And that is quite some dream. Since I have been with the organisation, we have been extending our services more and more each day for the very vulnerable members of the masonic family - people with Alzheimer’s Disease who are very frail, for example. Gone are the days when you had to be fit and ambulant and pass a medical in order to get into the RMBI’s homes. We are doing much, much more for the people who are so very vulnerable and who perhaps need the traditions, reassurance and the permanency of Freemasonry’s embrace more than those who are pretty competent, who can speak up for themselves and make sure they can get the help they want. We are soon going to be opening the first masonically-run home for people with a mental handicap. That is a subject particularly close to my heart, for I have spent many years working with people with learning disabilities. The Fraternity has given fantastic financial help to organisations which run homes for people with a learning disability - which is great - but I know from talking to people in the craft that the reassurance really would come from knowing their son or daughter was happily settled in something that was run by Freemasonry and would enjoy a much greater degree of protection than if they were in some home run by a private organisation or a public authority and closed down and changed.” A new site is being looked at in the West Riding of Yorkshire.
    In her career, she has opened or created somewhere between 30 to 40 homes. Since she has been with the RMBI she has had “the great privilege” of achieving the establishment of a new home in Watford, one at Hindhead and one at Hove, and “we are now at full tilt to create one in Essex. I love that type of work particularly. It is great to create something from nothing, not just in terms of the service it provides for people in need, but the creation of jobs is a great feeling. Seeing a Home develop its own particular style and become an accepted part of the RMBI tapestry gives enormous satisfaction.”
    “Yes, there are frustrations, yes there are times when the work is not going quite how you want it to, but it comes right, and if there are things which don’t come right to start with, well, as my colleagues are used to me trotting out : ‘We don’t have problems, we only have challenges’, and if you see it as a challenge and not a problem, then I think you do approach it a bit more positively, and maybe you come out the other end with it resolved reasonably.”
    There is surely something very special about an organisation which can attract persons of the calibre of Jane Reynolds - and that means there is something very special about the RMBI’s chief executive. In Shakespeare’s words, “We are blessed in the change.”