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Jane was born, raised and educated in the United Kingdom, completing an MSc in sociology at the London School of Economics. Together with her husband Andy, she came to Denmark in the late 1970s, where she started her own company offering education to business executives. After her spinal cord injury (SCI) in 1996, she took up a position at Copenhagen Business School to teach researchers and teachers to improve their skills to an international student audience.

About a month after Jane’s injury, she took part in a demonstration against planned cuts in the SCI clinic where she was admitted. This engagement for improvement of the lives for individuals with SCI continued until her death. By 1999, Jane was elected to the Board of Directors of the Danish Consumer Organisation RYK (www.ryk.dk), and was its president from 2002 to 2006. She was among the initiators of a network for women in the Nordic countries (kNORR), which also worked with the sexuality for women with SCI [1].

In 2006, Jane was involved with the founding of the European Spinal Cord Injury Federation (ESCIF—www.escif.org), and was elected President in 2010, a position she remained in until her death. Jane also came up with the idea for a Global SCI Consumer Network (www.globalsci.net), which was launched in 2012. Jane understood the importance of bringing people together and that despite all the differences surrounding SCI, having a unified voice could help advocacy efforts for people living with SCI all over the world. Due to this engagement, Jane was invited to organise the first Consumer workshop at the International Spinal Cord Society (ISCoS) in New Delhi, 2010, and since then it is an integrated part during the ISCoS Congresses to highlight the consumer perspectives. She was also invited to be the first consumer keynote speaker at the ISCoS Congress in Istanbul 2013. The importance of cooperation and exchange of experience between the health professionals and the consumers has always been important for Jane. All of Jane’s work on bringing SCI consumer organisations together was the inspiration for the newly formed North American SCI Consortium of people living with SCI.

Within all these organisations, Jane continuously made serious efforts in promoting all kinds of projects, ranging from management work to seminars, contributions to publications, health policy, research and much more, and she participated actively in the execution of all of them.

Apart from all these impressive organisational endeavours, Jane engaged herself in the development of the International SCI Data Sets [2, 3], as well as the www.elearnSCI.org [4]. Further, Jane was aware of the importance of research and international collaboration to improve not only the lives of those current living with SCI, but also those who in the future may contract a SCI [5, 6]. Jane knew the value of the lived experience of SCI and the importance of including that expertise in collaboration with the expertise of clinicians and researchers.

In all her work, of which only some examples are given above, Jane was known to be professional, thorough and committed. It is deeply impressive how much Jane has managed to overcome, apart from a full-time job, and how well these tasks have been solved, and always with the involvement of the consumers with SCI at the forefront. Jane and the results of her great work will always be appreciated, remembered, and of great inspiration worldwide.

After a long period of illness, Jane passed away on 8 August 2018. Jane’s death came shortly after her husband, Andy’s death in May 2018. She leaves behind a daughter, son-in-law and two grandchildren.