Jane Campbell
Jane Campbell
Former Mayor of Cleveland, Ohio, USA
Running Cleveland in the early 2000s was very challenging . . . We had to make hard decisions about what was the most important action to take, and how we would measure the success of any investment.
Jane Campbell has spent decades in public service in a variety of roles, on the local, state and federal level. Before serving in her current positions as Director of the Washington, D.C. office of the National Development Council (NDC) and President of Women Impacting Public Policy (WIPP), Campbell was the first woman Mayor of Cleveland, President of the National Conference of State Legislatures, and Governing Magazine named her 2000’s Public Official of the Year, while she was County Commissioner for Ohio’s largest county.
From 2012-2014, Campbell served as the Staff Director of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, first serving Senator Mary Landrieu and continuing under Senator Maria Cantwell as Staff Director and then Senior Advisor, where she led the Committee’s work on access to capital and women’s entrepreneurship. As Staff Director, Campbell directed policy to support small businesses’ access to capital, federal contracting opportunities, business counseling, and engagement in international trade. From 2009-2013, Campbell served as Senator Mary Landrieu’s Chief of Staff, leading efforts to recover from both Hurricane Katrina and the Gulf oil spill, and serving as her key healthcare advisor.
In her current role as the Director of the Washington office of the National Development Council, Campbell brings the expertise of NDC’s 40 years of experience working to bring capital to underserved communities—both urban and rural—into the federal public policy debate. NDC works in more than 100 communities across America building public facilities and creating commercial redevelopment, low income housing, all through public-private partnerships and creative use of federal, state and local financing tools.
In 2016, Women Impacting Public Policy partnered with NDC to provide support for WIPP’s coalition activities. In her role as Director of the NDC Washington office, Campbell also serves as President of WIPP. Previously, Campbell spent five years as County Commissioner for Ohio’s largest county and six terms in the Ohio House of Representatives. Her public service focused on economic development, fiscal stability, child welfare, and health and human services policy. Between 1997-1998, she successfully implemented welfare reform in Cuyahoga County, Ohio’s most populous jurisdiction.
When you are the mayor of a city, all of a sudden you are the leader of the city, you have no peers. The opportunity to be part of a women's network of mayors is that it gives you a safe space to have a conversation, where you’re really expressing frustration.