Director
Jane Jackson has over 20 years experience working for non profits as a grant writer, fundraiser and administrator. With a background in the health care field as a nurse midwife, she has worked in support of organizations that benefit families and children, especially those who are marginalized due to low incomes, lack of advantages, and other challenges. In the 1980’s she edited the New American Pocket Medical Dictionary and published The Whole Nurse Catalog. She is an avid knitter and quilter and after September 11, 2001, co-founded United We Quilt, an organization that matched over 500 volunteer quilters with families who lost loved ones on 9/11 who requested personalized memory quilts as keepsakes to honor their loved ones. Jane now lives and works in Bayonne, N.J., where she directs a non profit storefront social service agency that houses a food pantry, thrift shops, and social service outreach. She has been married for 32 years to Blyden Jackson, a writer, and is the proud mother of Aaron, a poet, and Gail, a drawer and musician. Creating and strengthening family ties, both with the family she was blessed to be given, and with the family she meets in her daily life, is her particular brand of artistic creativity.
She has been on the United Divas Board for over a year, serving on the editorial review committee for United Divas’ publication, Shouted Whisper, and as fundraising consultant. She was drawn to United Divas because of her lifelong support of the arts, especially women artists who have difficulty reaching a broader audience, and because of the mission to support, mentor, and advocate for beginning artists. She believes that art, in all its varied forms, from the drawings of preschoolers, to the work of the most accomplished and well known artists, is a necessity of life for everyone, nurturing the soul and adding depth and beauty to our daily lives.