Meet Our Team
With backgrounds in a range of disciplines, our team is united by a shared passion for collaboration, the arts, and creating a better future for our students.
With backgrounds in a range of disciplines, our team is united by a shared passion for collaboration, the arts, and creating a better future for our students.
Jayne is an author and publisher of children’s books. She grew up on a farm in Battle Creek, Michigan, where her mother’s love of poetry and quick-witted humor sparked an early appreciation for good rhymes.
After raising three children, she wrote the "Dinosaurs Living in My Hair" series. She has received numerous national awards for each title.
Prior to Jayne’s publishing and writing career, she served as a board member to the Northeast Guidance Center (Northeast Integrated Health) in Detroit. During this time, she learned that a collective team effort helped empower positive change for mental health.
Jayne is passionate about working with children and helping to spark their imaginations and creative spirits through poetry, face-to-face interaction, and genuine enthusiasm. The formation of Literacy for Kids takes her simple vision and unites it with a broader group of participants, donors, and partners.
Jayne feels if one person can make a difference, then a community can increase results expeditiously.
Collaboration is the way forward. To build an alliance between select authors and educators creates a powerful environment. The human connection is everything.
Jayne Rose-ValleeHeather Mertz serves as the Literacy for Kids executive director. She leads the team to help create, develop, brand, and market the foundation. As a prominent face of the organization, Heather builds philanthropic opportunities and maintains long-term relationships with key donors.
Her consistent community outreach increases the foundation’s visibility. She collaborates with the accountants and financial advisors to prepare and propose annual budgets.
Heather has a background in elementary education. Her genuine love and appreciation for education is a perfect fit with LFK. She comes from a love-of-reading place which she has instilled in her own children. Moving the foundation forward allows her to share this affection for reading and art with students across the country. Driven by this passion, Heather continues to see children and educators as the heart of what she does.
In 2019, Julee Mertz joined the Literacy for Kids board of directors. Julee, the founder of Big City Swing Dance Studio, has appeared and coached in a variety of films. The transfer of energy and sense of community from her dance career is a perfect fit to serve on the LFK board of directors.
Raising two children in the melting pot of Chicago’s diverse neighborhoods gives her firsthand knowledge of how the arts can unify and strengthen young students. Her appreciation and love of movement parallels the LFK consistent theme, “teach without children realizing it….ignite a fire under them to see the world through a different lens….spark imagination and creative thinking.”
Beth has extensive experience within the communications field. She began her career at Northwestern University’s public relations department, worked for People Magazine and then at the Grosse Pointe News. Most recently, she was the editor of the quarterly magazine for the world-renowned Royal Botanic Garden of Melbourne while she and her husband lived in Australia.
As a Grosse Pointe News staff writer, her favorite beat was covering the Grosse Pointe Public Library which she considered to be an underappreciated gem of the community.
Beth worked as a freelanced writer when her children were young and volunteered for numerous community organizations. She chaired the Scholastic Book Sale at her son’s school where getting students excited about reading was formed. Once she realized some students could not afford books, she convinced the parents organization to financially help these children. She will never forget the smiles of those children when they realized they were taking home their own books.
Once Beth returned home from Australia last year, she quickly became an active member of the community once again. She is looking forward to assisting Literacy for Kids with its mission to inspire students to embrace the arts through literature.
As an extension of our Literacy for Kids team, we work with an amazing group of celebrated authors, artists, musicians, and Foundations. A few of our recent collaborations are featured below.
