Ask Lynne Kelleher what she does and she’ll tell you she sells houses. Ask her friends, her fellow realtors, or the roughly 300 women who show up four times a year to hand her a check for 100+ Women Who Care Bucks County, and they’ll tell you she does something much bigger.

She built a philanthropic engine out of a borrowed idea, a small trusted team, and a refusal to let a good cause sit on the sidelines. She’s a mother who reshaped her whole career around raising her kids the way she wanted to. And she’s helped women from neighboring counties, and as far away as Charleston and New Zealand, start their own versions of what she built here.

Lynne Kelleher is a 2026 Bucks County Parent Women of Influence Award Winner

Bucks County Parent’s Women of Influence Awards celebrate exceptional women making significant impacts in our community. Lynne was nominated and selected based on her achievements and dedication to creating positive change. Each Women of Influence Award Winner has committed to support Family Focus Media’s core values. Together, we are fostering a sense of belonging and empowerment for all families. All backgrounds, races, genders, and sexual orientations are welcome and safe with us.

The Realtor Who Wanted No Boss But Herself

Kelleher’s path to real estate wasn’t a straight line. Before she was signing listing agreements, she owned a children’s store in Flemington, New Jersey. She later ran a Newtown branch of The Gap. “That gave me the entrepreneurial bug,” she said. “I just realized that I liked it when nobody was the boss of me.” 

When retail hours stopped working for her young family, she and her husband made a deliberate choice. “We decided that just wasn’t how we wanted to live our life,” she said. Real estate gave her something retail couldn’t: a schedule she could shape around her kids. More than three decades later, she’s still doing it at BHHS Fox & Roach Realtors in Newtown, and she still loves it.

Kelleher has watched the industry transform completely since she started. “We still had the real estate books that came out every week,” she said, describing an era before the internet reshaped how homes were bought and sold. Her instinct for service showed up long before 100+ Women Who Care did. The Pennsylvania Association of Realtors named her a Good Neighbor for the community-first career she’s built. Kelleher put it simply in that piece: “I’m not just Lynne Kelleher, Realtor. I’m Lynne Kelleher, community supporter.” 

A Borrowed Idea and a Leap of Faith

In 2014, Kelleher sat in a meeting for Chester County’s chapter of 100+ Women Who Care. She watched three local charities make their case for funding. She left with two thoughts: “This is brilliant” and “I can do this with one arm tied behind my back.” 

She’d spent years chairing the charity auction for the Bucks County Board of Realtors. It meant wrangling committees and soliciting the same small businesses everyone else was hitting up, for a return that rarely exceeded $20,000. What she saw in that Chester County room was simpler, and far more effective. “I raise that kind of money in an hour,” she said.

From 35 Women to 301 Members

She started with 35 women, mostly fellow agents and clients. “The word spread, and I kept talking about it, and talking about it, and talking about it,” she said. Today the group has 301 members. In 2025 alone it distributed more than $110,000 to 12 different Bucks County charities, all in the span of four one-hour meetings.

Once the group grew past 200 women, Kelleher changed the payout structure so funding is now split proportionally by vote, rather than winner take all. “Everybody walks away with something,” she said. “I love that.”

One vote still stays with her. Years ago, when the group was around 65 women, a neighbor’s father presented on behalf of his daughter. She had broken her neck diving into a pool. The other two charities on the ballot stepped aside so the room could focus entirely on her. One hundred percent of the meeting proceeds went to the organization. “There were several people who wrote $500 checks, not $100 checks,” Kelleher said. “That was really something.”

Her philosophy for keeping the group thriving hasn’t wavered. “Let’s not turn it into something that it’s not,” she said. “Keep it simple, and that’s what it is.” A full list of the organizations her members have supported is posted on the group’s Charities We Support page. The schedule of upcoming quarterly meetings is open to anyone curious enough to sit in on one.

A Room the Community Built Together

None of it runs on Kelleher alone. Every quarterly meeting is hosted at Maggio’s Restaurant, Bar & Ballroom in Southampton, which donates the space for the group’s four annual gatherings. It’s one more way the group keeps its overhead close to nothing, so more of every hundred dollars reaches a charity. The appetizers on the table each quarter are typically underwritten by member volunteers looking for a little visibility of their own. These are small business owners like Susan Tinari of Tinari Container Service, Jenni-Lyn Williams of the Snarky Tea House in Doylestown, and Marlene Panzica of Pac N Go Storage.

The charities that have come through in 2026 show just how wide a net the group casts. The Ann Silverman Community Health Center, Vita Education, and Breathing Room Foundation opened the year in March. Friends of Tyler State Park, Little Santa Big Shop, and Amy’s Kisses presented in June. Interfaith Food Alliance, the Council of Southeastern Pennsylvania, and the Mullaney Tennis Foundation took the floor in September. 

Some organizations address emergency needs. Others focus on education, domestic violence prevention, or simply keeping a local park thriving. Kelleher and her small volunteer team review every nomination that comes in from the membership. Part of what makes the model work is that the room itself decides who walks away with support.

Helping Other Women Keeps Her Going

“I’ll talk to anybody about this, and I’ll help anybody that wants to get started,” she said. Her right hand through all of it has been her friend and fellow realtor, Becky Markowitz. “She’s the Ethel to my Lucy,” Kelleher said.

What continues to surprise her, more than a decade in, isn’t the dollar totals. It’s how the room feels. “I didn’t expect people to feel so empowered and grateful to be a part of it,” she said. “I want that room to feel like it’s a great big hug, and that everybody there is part of something that’s bigger than them.” She wants that feeling to continue long after she’s stepped back from running meetings herself. She measures her own legacy less by the total raised and more by whether a first time attendee walks out knowing she made a real difference for the cost of a hundred dollars and an hour of her time.

To the woman who’s sitting on an idea of her own, one she suspects nobody has time for, Kelleher doesn’t hesitate. “Take the leap of faith,” she said. “Believe in yourself and form a coalition of other like-minded people who have a heart like yours to help you move it forward. You accomplish nothing by sitting on the sidelines, and you don’t have to go it alone. There are people out there that will support you if you ask.”

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