Jan Stone

That toddlin\' town

I'm an essayist, blogger and recovering PR executive who is a master in resilience. I've endured a brain aneurysm, loss of loved ones and a head-on collision—and lived to tell the tales. My writing has appeared at venues including More magazine and The Chicago Tribune. I blog at Elect2Care & JanStoneWritesOn and was an invited blogger at a national conference on women’s economic and political issues.

A recipient of multiple residencies from the Ragdale Foundation, most recently I was working through a selective two-year certificate program in the non-fiction genre at the University of Chicago’s Writer’s Studio. I'm also an alumnus​ of The Op-Ed Project, an innovative national program that scouts and trains women and other under-represented experts to submit works of thought leadership to media gatekeepers across all platforms.

My essays explore the threads linking trauma and fear to empathy and resilience. My op-eds examine how a culture of courage, connection, compassion and communication has been supplanted by one of entitlement, intolerance and inequity.

In a previous life, I've worked at some of the world’s top advertising and public relations agencies including Leo Burnett, Edelman, ComBlu and Bozell Worldwide, where I mastered the art of helping clients strategically achieve their objectives while managing the crises inherent in an imperfect world. I earned corporate cred as Manager of Marketing & Communications at Bell + Howell. I live on the beach in Chicago, where I anxiously await watching the Chicago Cubs win.