Jean G. McMurray

Jean is a recognized leader in food insecurity and serves as Director Emeritus of the board of directors of Project Bread, the state’s leading food security organization. She was the recipient of the organization’s Patrick Hughes Award for Social Justice in 2026.

As a member of Project Bread’s Founding Steering Committee Jean helped establish the Make Hunger History Coalition in 2024 and currently serves as a volunteer member of its Advisory Council. Make Hunger History is a bold statewide initiative to make Massachusetts the first state in the nation to permanently end hunger. The Coalition is made up of a diverse set of stakeholders – from food access, healthcare, public health, local agriculture, elected officials, philanthropy, and grassroots advocates – committing together to achieve the goal: All Massachusetts residents have dignified access to food and the economic resources needed to make choices about their food.

Jean also currently serves as a corporator of the Greater Worcester Community Foundation and UniBank.

From 1998 to 2025, Jean served as Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Worcester County Food Bank (WCFB), guiding the organization and its network of food pantries and community meal programs to tremendous successes. Under her leadership, WCFB increased the scope of its food security work, deepened community partnerships, established the WCFB Fund to End Hunger at the Greater Worcester Community Foundation, and built an impressive advocacy program, including the Worcester Food Policy Council and the Center on Food Equity, all focused on WCFB’s goal of providing food for people today while working to permanently solve the problem of hunger. Prior to becoming CEO, she was the Agency Outreach Coordinator from 1995 to 1997.

Jean has a passion for social change and food justice in the United States and around the world. Before WCFB, she worked as a consultant to the Central American Peace Scholarship Program at the United States Agency for International Development and as a social scientist in sustainable agriculture at the Center for Tropical Agriculture Research and Training in Costa Rica.

Jean was born and raised in the historic Blackstone Valley by parents who were public school educators and who instilled in their children a lifelong commitment to community service. Jean earned a bachelor’s degree in international relations from Eisenhower College, the liberal arts college of the Rochester Institute of Technology.

Upon her appointment to the UMass Memorial Medical Group Board of Trustees, Jean shared, “I am happy to support the Medical Group and UMass Memorial Health’s mission to improving the health of the people of Central New England in any way that I can.”