Jane Mason is the Gingerbread Girl.  I am a writer, a baker, and a businesswoman.

Until 2005 I was a partner in a global strategy consulting firm and specialised in financial services.  Since 2005 I have worked independently to support senior executives in international professional services firms on their most important strategic, organisational, and leadership issues.   I also bake bread for a small number of local delis and shops, I teach baking, and I am working on a book that encourages people to bake without stress and fuss – focussing on the fact that baking bread is easy and fun, not fraught with difficulties and probable failure.

Working independently means I can take the time to explore a wide range of interests and develop my ideas and thinking.  I seek to  integrate what I know to help create a world in which we are more responsible regarding the choices we make, how we treat each other, and therefore how we can build communities that are based on positive and progressive relationships.  To that end, I am finishing a project I started a year ago to develop a contemporary understanding of virtue and how to embed it more deeply and broadly in society at large, as a way to get us out of the mess that the financial crisis has brought to light.  Baking and the Virtue Project have come together in Virtuousbread.com, an social enterprise I have founded to enable people all over the world to find, eat, and learn about good bread and to forge the link between bread and virtue.

I created Gingerbread Girl in order to integrate the different aspects of my character, my skills, and my wide range of interests and experience.  I got tired trying to compartmentalise – showing different parts of myself to different people.  I have come to believe I will best serve clients, friends, and ultimately myself by bringing everything I have to all aspects of my life.

I seek to make a positive impact on people around me and hope to help them make a bit more sense of their own worlds in some way.