4 | MARCH 14 • 2024 
J
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from the executive director

A Women’s History Tribute 
to My Favorite Trailblazer
I

n this week’s issue of the 
Detroit Jewish News, we 
salute exceptional women, 
the brave giants who blazed 
trails and shattered glass ceil-
ings to give those of us who 
followed the opportunities to 
walk through 
doors that would 
otherwise have 
been closed. But 
for me, one giant 
stood taller than 
all the rest. 
My mom, 
Jane Raitt, was 
a force of nature. The ultimate 
Renaissance woman, she threw 
herself wholeheartedly into 
everything she did, and when 
she set her mind to a task, noth-
ing could stand in her way. A 
working woman ahead of her 
time, Mom was an entrepreneur, 
a sales executive and a career 
coach as well as a volunteer and 
community activist. Strong, 
whip smart and funny (even 
when she wasn’t trying) with a 
booming voice and a contagious 
laugh, she exuded warmth and 
compassion and had a smile that 
lit up a room. 
Born Jane Wildman on Sept. 
15, 1943, and raised in Newark, 
N.J., Jane attended University 
of Pittsburgh and New Jersey-
based Fairleigh Dickinson 
University as an undergraduate. 
She also earned a master’s degree 
in counseling from Wayne State 
University. 
As her first foray into the 
working world, Jane was a high 
school English teacher, first in 
Newark and then, after she and 
my Dad moved to Michigan, 

at Southfield High. She was 
dedicated to working with 
learning-resistant kids, many 
of whom had been written off 
by other teachers, ultimately 
helping them fall in love with 
reading and writing and laying 
the groundwork for their future 
success.
My mom wasn’t fearless, but 
one of her superpowers was that 
she never let her fear stop her. 
When she became pregnant with 
my brother in 1971, there was a 
law on the books that pregnant 
women had to stop teaching as 
soon as they started to show a 
bump. Rather than accepting 
this ridiculous rule, she opted 
to do something about it. She 
took the school district to court 
for discrimination and WON, 
continuing to teach throughout 
her pregnancy and paving the 
way for generations of women 
to follow. 
When Mom entered corpo-
rate America, she lived by the 

“fake it ’til you make it” philoso-
phy. She wasn’t always the most 
knowledgeable in the room, but 
she had smarts and guts, and she 
was willing to work harder and 
longer than the next person until 
she became so. 
When she became a salesper-
son at Compuware, for exam-
ple, she knew literally nothing 
about computer systems, let 
alone the high-tech mainframe 
software she would be selling to 
multi-million-dollar corpora-
tions. I remember sitting in the 
kitchen, a rapt audience as she 
practiced her sales pitch, reciting 
the words “
Abend-AID makes 
sense” over and over again until 
it actually did. 
She also knew how to find the 
right resources and nurture the 
right relationships with people 
who could help her grow her 
expertise, and whom she could 
help in exchange. Over the next 
10 years, she became one of the 
company’s top producers, beat-

ing out others who had far more 
experience. 
Even the greatest have 
their misses. Before joining 
Compuware, Mom was an 
entrepreneur. In the early 1980s, 
she and my dad established 
First Rate Enterprises (a name 
I would later adopt for my own 
entrepreneurial enterprise, First 
Raitt Communications). 
 Unforeseen circumstances 
with their main supplier resulted 
in the company’s demise, just as 
the business was getting off the 
ground, which she saw as one 
of the greatest disappointments 
of her life. As she wrote in her 
journal in January of 1984, “
All 
of my dreams, goals and aspira-
tions were tied into the success 
of First Rate. All that I wished 
for my family was equally to 
come through the success of 
First Rate. The very thought of 
its non-existence gives pain to 
my existence.
” 
Although it was a devastating 
loss, Mom managed to pull her-
self out of that hole and create a 
new path to success, and it was 
that strength of character that 
has stayed with me throughout 
my own career, and yes, even 
through my own misses.
Mom was equally dedicated 
in her pursuits outside of work, 
whether volunteering for the 
Special Olympics or campaign-
ing for the establishment of West 
Bloomfield’s first off-leash dog 
park. Although she was always 
proud of her Jewish heritage, 
she found her spirituality later 
in life, and her temples — Shir 
Shalom in Michigan and, later, 
Ner Tamid when she and Dad 

Marni Raitt

Jane Raitt’s business headshot, circa about 1985.

PURELY COMMENTARY

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