Meet Jane Perdue

Jane sometimes refers to herself (with a smile, of course!) as BIG's chief inspiration officer.

Inspired early in life by her Dad's words, "If you put your heart and mind to it, you can do anything a man can do — and do it better," Jane set out to tackle corporate America. She worked as a vice president for 15 years in Fortune 100 telecommunications companies including Comcast and AT&T Broadband. There, often the only female executive at the table, she put her MBA to good use managing $25 million budgets and thousands of employees, developing and implementing strategy, negotiating labor contracts, developing leaders, mentoring women, and accumulating a staggering collection of purses. Her passion was (and is) developing leaders and furthering women in business.

Realizing she mis-interpreted her dad's advice, Jane left corporate America after a boss described her as Aunt Polly; and with a dear friend and respected leader, Amy Diederich, founded Braithwaite Innovation Group, a boutique female-owned professional development and consulting firm. In her second act of life, Jane works as a leadership and women in business expert, speaker and writer.

Jane's first two books have been leadership anthologies, Yes You Can!, co-authored with Warren Bennis, et al.; and The Character-Based Leader: Instigating a Leadership Revolution...One Person at a Time, co-authored with the Lead Change Group. She's hard at work on a book for women based on her "Aunt Polly" and power learnings. Jane's articles have been featured in SmartBrief; Insights; Forbes; The Glass Hammer; and the Charleston, SC Post and Courier, Moultrie News and Charleston Current newspapers. (It's her goal to blog someday for the Harvard Business Review...dream BIG)

Jane actively volunteers for and sits on the Board of Directors for the Charleston, SC Center for Women, the largest women's skill development center in the state, and created their new Women's Leadership Institute. Jane has been a mentor for the Charleston Young Professionals, NAMIC and SHRM. A former Women in Cable Telecommunications Board member, Mentor of the Year, Betsy Magness Leadership Institute alumna, certified coach and polarity thinking consultant, she has been featured as a leadership and women in business expert in newspapers, magazines, radio and television. Jane does keynotes and has presented at numerous conferences including Society of Human Resource Management, the Women in Business Conference, ThinkTEC Innovation Summit, and Women in Cable Telecommunications.

You'll find Jane blogging at LeadBIG and WomenBIG.  Connect and share with her via an email, on Twitter where you'll find her as the @thehrgoddess (ask her about that story!) and on LinkedIn.