Jane Pugh was born in Birmingham, England and lived in the West Midlands until moving to Ireland in 2007. Jane spent the first part of her working career in the media industry but her passion was for health and fitness. She took the plunge in 1993 and joined the cardiac rehabilitation charity, Action Heart.

Initially starting as a volunteer exercise supervisor Jane introduced cardiac patients to safe exercise with appropriate warm up and cool down techniques and guided them to effective intensity of aerobic exercise, in the Cardiac Rehabilitation Clinics. Her other duties were to take regular heart rate and blood pressure readings and input patient information before and after exercise.

Gaining rapport and experience with the patients in the clinical setting, this role was expanded to a senior exercise supervisor in 1994 to deal with asymptomatic healthy adults, with the opening of the Charity’s Health & Fitness Club.

Jane had a key role in setting up and developing the administrative systems that are currently in place, and have enabled the club to secure a stable clientele in excess of 900.

Jane was responsible for the Intermittent Claudicating individualised exercise programmes; tracking progress and updating programmes; establishing a working tool for assessing the development of patients referred to Action Heart (as part of a research study) by the vascular surgeons.

In 2002 Jane became the Health Club manager, leading the team of exercise supervisors, organising programmes and challenges for the Health Club users, and creating introductory sessions for new starters.
Jane went on to develop the Exercise Referral Scheme where hospital consultants and GP's refer patients for an exercise programme. This scheme took patient referrals and assessed whether they could continue for exercise or be reviewed further for investigations by the cardiologist.

In August 2006 Jane became part of the Smoking Cessation team, advising staff of the Hospital and cardiac patients to quit smoking and making recommendations for Nicotine Replacement Therapy and or one to one advisor and motivational support.