Jane Miller: Charter Baking Co. CEO keeps dough rising for Rudi's Organic breads.

• Author: Bronikowski, Lynn
• Position: EXECUTIVE EDGE

Jane Miller walks outside her office as the smell of baking bread wafts through the air at the Charter Baking Co. in Boulder. She shows off the funky, brightly painted van fresh off the showroom floor and revved up for marketing gigs.

"I made the curtains," she says. "You could say I'm a multitasking CEO."

Miller last year was named president and CEO of Charter, the baker of Rudi's Organic breads. Sewing curtains was just something fun she did as she oversees a company that employs 300 with $80 million in annual sales.

"I usually come in at 6:30 in the morning and do everything from strategy meetings to calling on customers," said Miller, 5 1, who recently oversaw the national launch of Rudi's Gluten-Free breads. "Baking is such an art, but creating a loaf of bread that doesn't have wheat is a science."

She worked with retired food scientists from General Foods, who were 83 and 77 years old, to develop the line that includes original, multigrain and cinnamon raisin sandwich breads.

'The gluten-free market is a vibrant market to go after," said the native of Peoria, III., who majored in Russian studies at Knox College in Galesburg, III., earned an MBA from Southern Methodist and since 1984 has been in the food industry. "I've always been lucky, or maybe it's a case of seeing an opportunity and taking it."

One of those opportunities was being the first in her family to go to college after earning a scholarship.

"We were dirt poor," she says. "My dad was a bowling alley manager, but after my folks got a divorce, he abandoned us. My mom had no skills, was a school bus driver and did other jobs--anything she could do to make money for the family, she did. A lot of my ambition came from that because I did not want to be someone who worked three jobs my whole...