Jackie has had a successful career editing women’s magazines.
She began in journalism writing features for her local Northampton papers, The Chronicle and Echo and The Mercury and Herald. She then freelanced for national newspapers. She had no territory, she was ‘on the road’ travelling the country writing by-lined front page splashes, lead stories and in-depth features.
After seven years of this she crossed over to magazines as Features Editor of Living Magazine, where she developed features, health and beauty sections from scratch. As Associate Editor she was instrumental in revamping Living and taking it to over 400,000 copies per month - a phenomenal figure for the 1980s.
Jackie was headhunted to edit Parents Magazine, where she doubled the circulation within 18 months. She was asked to become publisher, but instead accepted an offer to edit Bella, then newly launched. Within its first year it was selling in excess of 1 million per week, out-performing the whole of the established women’s weekly market.
During her first 18 months editing Bella Jackie devised and developed Take A Break, now Britain’s biggest selling women’s weekly with sales of over 1 million a week. It took four months from concept to launch decision, and a few weeks more to get it on the shelves. And she did this while she was gaining Bella sales of 1.35 million a week.
In 1989 Jackie went to New York to edit the company’s new monthly in the States, First for Women, which in eighteen months hit 3.5 million sales per month – the biggest single copy sales (ie. no subscriptions) in the US women’s market. After two and a half years in America, in 1992 she came back to edit Bella, worked on the development of several new magazine concepts for the company and stayed until 2002 - a total of 14 years in Bella’s hot seat, before leaving to look for new challenges.
She is the author of two books
‘Now, Where Did I Put My Glasses? Caring for your elderly parents, a practical and emotional lifeline’ Simon and Schuster 2008
and
‘The Modern Grandparents’ Guide’ Piatkus 2009.
Jackie and Brian, her husband of 42 years, have five granddaughters, aged between 11 and 5. They enjoy scuba diving, horse riding and bell-ringing.