Biography
Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Jeanette Gatto spent her winters visiting Sunny Isles Beach, Florida for many years before making Florida’s Riviera her permanent home.

She was an English major at the University of Miami. But the call of the big city lured her back to Manhattan where she embarked on a media planning career at Wells, Rich, Greene, Inc., a world renown advertising agency. She then spent several years working at Young and Rubicam, another ad agency powerhouse, on brands for General Foods and Johnson & Johnson.  She also worked on national advertising accounts such as IBM, Richardson-Vicks and Hanes Hosiery at other NY advertising agencies.

In 1985 Jeanette was recruited by Ogilvy & Mather/San Francisco, which ultimately became Publicis & Hal Riney, the ad agency known for creating the world famous “Morning In America” commercial for Ronald Reagan’s re-election campaign. She served as Senior Vice President overseeing the New York, Chicago and San Francisco media departments and was primarily responsible for developing media and communication strategies for General Motors Saturn, Sprint PCS, Gallo Wines, Alamo Rent-A-Car and Stroh Brewery. She then joined Saatchi & Saatchi/San Francisco, and finally moved back to the East Coast to work at Mediaedge as Vice President/ Communications Strategy Director for Lincoln/Mercury automobiles.

Though her career took her to New York, California and back again, she never really felt that she left her South Florida roots and moved back to Sunny Isles Beach as a permanent resident with her husband, Joseph. Jeanette’s interest in politics began at a very early age when her father, Frank C. Gatto, ran for office in a local district election in Brooklyn.  She decided to run for commission in Spring 2010 in part as a tribute to her father who was also a public servant and appointed by then New York Governor Hugh Carey as Major in the New York Guard as Command Engineer.