About Jane

As a successful local small business owner, Jane understands the importance of bringing good jobs to our community and ensuring that those jobs stay in our community. She founded Ohio-based Helsley Advertising, specializing in strategic communications and investor relations, working with businesses all over America.

A native Daytonian, Jane has served our community on diverse variety of boards including the Development Board of St. Elizabeth Hospital, Women in Leadership, the Dayton Chapter of the NAACP, and the Friends of the Dayton Ballet and Opera Guild. She has also been politically active on the national level. A founding member of both the Women's Council of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and The Small Business Council of the Democratic National Committee, Jane is also an active member of EMILY's List and the Women's Leadership Forum. She has worked tirelessly for candidates who, like her, will fight for the needs of working families. These candidates include Texas Governor Ann Richards in 1994, President Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996, and Vice President Al Gore in 2000.

Jane Mitakides is a Daytonian with deep roots in the community. She began her education at Jefferson Elementary in Dayton, spent her early summers learning to swim at Bomberger Park, and enjoyed fishing with her father, Les Helsley, in Preble County. Her father was one of the "Tool Town" engineers, who worked on the Norden Bombsight project during World War II, and later joined Frank M. Tait at Dayton's Tait Manufacturing.

Jane has been married for 25 years to John Mitakides, a dentist who has practiced in the Dayton area for over 30 years. They both graduated from Centerville High School, attended Ohio public universities (Jane at Wright State and John at Ohio State, where he played football). Jane is also the very proud mother of two children: Katie, who is completing her PhD in International Relations, and Andrew, a senior at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia.