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Jane Pratt, 38

Founder and editor in chief

Jane magazine

Talking to Jane Pratt is like schmoozing with a childhood girlfriend. She’s up-front, funny and a bit irreverent. You feel like you could tell her anything.

That’s exactly the sensibility that had readers flocking to her first publishing effort, Sassy, founded when Ms. Pratt was merely 24. But the teen-targeted magazine’s frank talk, particularly about sex, enraged the Moral Majority, which launched a boycott. Sassy was removed from thousands of newsstands, and wary advertisers fled. The magazine eventually ceased publication.

In the following years, Ms. Pratt hosted a couple of TV talk shows, among other efforts. Still feeling like she had “something to prove,” she launched her eponymous magazine for a slightly older reader in 1997.

Revenge has been sweet. The Fairchild title’s circulation has grown steadily, to approximately 700,000 last year from about 400,000 at the start. Ad pages surged to 823 in 2000 from 540 in 1998, Jane’s first full year. And the magazine’s stories—from an interview with Whitney Houston at her diva best to a piece on Elizabeth Hurley in which the actress criticized former flame Hugh Grant’s sexual abilities—get lots of buzz.

Raised by “hippie” art professor parents in North Carolina, Ms. Pratt learned about survival when she left home to attend preppy Andover at 15. “It was harrowing to make that transition,” she remembers. “Still, it taught me not to be intimidated by the rich, the beautiful, the famous.”

Around that time, she developed a lifelong love of women’s magazines. But she thought the genre could use some improvement. “I wanted to see a magazine that makes women feel good about themselves,” she says.

Her loyal readers would say she did something better: She created one.

- Emily Denitto

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