Born in London, Jane attended Merrow Grange Convent School and then Guildford Technical College. However there was no family expectation that she should progress in education. Indeed, she was not even allowed to study mathematics, since it was considered inappropriate for a young woman, so she left school at 16. After working in a range of positions, she began working for the World Health Organisation in Geneva, where she worked for twelve years dealing with public health services, mental health and health services research, she was also personal assistant to the Assistant Director General from China.

After getting married she moved to New Zealand where she was encouraged to go to university for the first time; she was in her early thirties. She graduated from the Victoria University of Wellington, graduating with a First Class Honours degree in Linguistics, English and French. She then won a Senior Scholarship and later a New Zealand Government Postgraduate Doctoral Scholarship.

Before she could embark on her postgraduate studies she returned to Liverpool. There Jane joined the staff of the Liverpool school of Tropical Medicine and for eight years she was the School Administrator, responsible for all non-academic services

In December 1991, the newspaper magnate Robert Maxwell died suddenly and shortly afterwards it was discovered that some £440 million pounds was missing from his companies’ Pension Fund, leaving 30,000 pensioners potentially bereft. A Trust was established by the Government in July 1992 to help solve their plight and Jane Newell was appointed a Trustee. Three years later she became Chairman of the Trust where her work earned her great praise in the industry and, in 1997, the award of an OBE.

She chaired the pensions schemes of DSG (the Dixons’ Group) and of United Utilities, where she also served as a non-executive Director on the main Board for ten years and was one of the very few women who were directors of a Footsie One Hundred company. She also chaired the Electricity Supply Pension Scheme and was Deputy Chair of Glaxo Trustee Companies, and a trustee of the Glaxo Smith Klein Pension Plan. In 2005, she was appointed to chair the Royal Mail Pension Plan, the second largest scheme in the country, with 450,000 members and assets of £24 billion.

Jane Newell has also shown long standing commitment to public service across a wide range of roles – a non-executive director of the Royal Liverpool University Hospital Trust, Independent Assessor for the Cabinet Office, and assessor for the Home Office for appointments in the Police, Prison and Fire Services, a Trustee of Common Purpose Charitable Trust and a magistrate in Liverpool and more recently in London.