Jeanne Grunert is an award-winning writer, editor, and marketing consultant. At the age of 14, she won a national short story competition and studied fiction writing with Nebula-award winners Nancy Kress and Stephen Donaldson. She went on to publish magazine articles, essays, and stories as she completed her Bachelor of Arts in English and a Master of Arts in Writing.
A chance opportunity enabled her to pursue a career in marketing, and she led marketing for retail, financial services, and education testing and publishing companies in the New York City area, earning a second Master’s in Direct and Digital Marketing from New York University.
In 2007, Jeanne quit her fast-track marketing career to move to rural Virginia, where she opened Seven Oaks Consulting, a content marketing and writing business. Jeanne writes, edits, and provides marketing services to businesses nationwide, and serves on the Board of Experts for the National Association of Independent Writers and Editors as the Branding and Marketing Expert.
She is a member of the Friends of the Library, an avid supporter of Southside SPCA and the Blue Ridge Wildlife Center, and a certified master gardener. When she isn’t working, you can find Jeanne tending her extensive gardens, experimenting with new recipes, reading, or caring for her many pets. A lifelong Catholic, she credits St. Francis de Sales (the patron saint of writers) as her spiritual director.
Jeanne is a nutritarian, following a mostly plant-based diet. Her love of animals permeates almost everything she does. Various wildlife are frequent return visitors to the Grunerts’ home, including a box turtle named Myrtle, a large black rat snake dubbed Mr. Slithers, and a rabbit living in the rhododendron. She is married to her best friend, John, godmother to Michael and Olivia, and “mom” to several rescued cats and a German shepherd dog.
