Jane Alden was born and raised in a small Mississippi River Delta community in Arkansas. Everyone in town knew everyone else, their parents, and their grandparents before them. Though her father was a life-long cotton farmer, the family lived in town rather than on the farm, the only class difference in the all-white, all-protestant hamlet.

After graduating from the University of Arkansas, she moved to California and taught 7th grade English in a small central valley citrus-farming community. When she was recruited on the phone at U of A, she looked up Porterville, California, on the map, and it was only about an inch and a half north of Los Angeles, but it turned out the culture was closer to Arkansas or Oklahoma than to the bright lights and big city she craved. After two years teaching, she moved to Los Angeles, began a career in health care management. After many lucky circumstances and thanks to wonderful mentors, she ultimately became Chief Executive Officer at Los Angeles Children's Hospital, a mountain-top experience. After running a big organization for eight years, she became an executive coach, working with successful executives who want to be better leaders.

Jane and her partner of thirty years live in a small town thirty miles east of metropolitan Los Angeles. Claremont is rare for a Southern California town, having a distinct downtown village area and discernable city limits. Their chocolate lab, Delilah, is the captain of the domestic ship.