Jean Wade Rindlaub

Who was Jean Wade Rindlaub?

Jean Wade Rindlaub was one of the first American women to become a major advertising executive. She was inducted into the Advertising Hall of Fame in 1989.

Award-winning and pioneering woman advertiser Jean Wade Rindlaub was born Helen Jean Wade in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, on February 9, 1904. The eldest of two daughters born to Robert Mifflin Wade and Lola Heller Hess Wade, her family called her by her middle name, Jean, and she followed that tradition through adulthood.

Jean and her younger sister, Mary Emily, were schooled at home by their father who operated the Pennsylvania Business and Shorthand College. Jean learned shorthand and typing at a young age and by age eleven could type 50 words per minute. As a young adult she worked as a secretary to the advertising manager of the local Armstrong Cork Company. Within a short time she began assisting with copywriting.

Rindlaub left Pennsylvania in 1930, relocating to New York City to marry Willard W. Rindlaub. Within a month she began working at the prestigious advertising agency, Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn. Though Rindlaub worked full-time during her long marriage she and her husband had two children, John Wade Rindlaub and Anne Rindlaub Dow.