Jane Rankin

Graduating in 1983 from Oxford University - where I read History - I joined the advertising world as an Account Executive at Saatchi and Saatchi. I worked on the account management side of the agency world for ten very happy years, moving from Saatchi to BMP and on to Lowe Howard-Spink. Across the decade I was lucky enough to work with some of the most respected people in the industry, from whom I learnt a great deal, as well as for many famous client companies from Unilever through Rowntree Mackintosh, Lloyds Bank, COI and IDV to Kia-Ora.

In 1994 I leapt at the opportunity to join Gay Haines at Kendall Tarrant shortly after she had bought out the founding partners. My brief on joining was to establish a new division specialising in the rapidly-growing direct marketing industry - and this quickly expanded to incorporate the digital world which was in its infancy but clearly phenomenally important.

The 'integrated communications' division thrived immediately and became the top provider of talent to the best agencies in the industry. One of the most interesting aspects of the role was working with the advertising agencies to help them to build their own integrated agencies from scratch. This involved bringing together teams of individuals with very different yet complementary backgrounds, skills, attitudes and approaches to form formidable alliances.

For the last five years I have run my own business as a copywriter and I joined Grace Blue at the begining of 2010 to become reunited with Gay, Jay and Juliet.