Michele DeKinder-Smith and Jane Out of the Box

Michele DeKinder-Smith, Founder & CEO of Jane Out of the Box

Conducted research for Fortune 500 companies for nearly 20 years. Now, she's brought her passion for entrepreneurship and extensive research experience together to create Jane Out of the Box (www.janeoutofthebox.com), which conducts research for and about women business owners in order to help more women become successful on their own terms. Jane Out of the Box does this by providing research-based insight and education to women business owners and to the corporations and agencies that seek to serve them.

Michele started her first company, Linkage Research & Consulting, in 1998. Over the years, she learned critical lessons about how to grow your company to meet your personal financial and lifestyle goals. It was while studying entrepreneurial success principles and learning to apply them to her own first business that Michele became fascinated with what makes entrepreneurs 'tick', as well as what causes some to be more successful than others. Having grown her first business to over a million dollars in revenue, Michele was inspired to start Jane Out of the Box to help other women create the wealth and the lifestyles they deserve.

Michele holds a Masters of Marketing Research from the prestigious MMR program at University of Georgia, a Professional Researcher Certification, and is a sought after speaker at association events. Michele is Immediate Past President of the Professional Chapters Council of the American Marketing Association, which guides the activities of all 74 AMA chapters serving 23,000 professional marketers. She has been married for 21 years to husband, Rob, and is proud mom to recent high school graduate, RJ.