Dr. Jane Baxter
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Co-owner and Clinical Audiologist | Menlo Park Office
Dr. Baxter became a partner at Pacific Hearing Service in 1986 and both manages and provides audiology services at the Menlo Park office. She earned her clinical doctorate in Audiology (Au.D.) at Salus University, her master’s in Communication Disorders at San Francisco State and teaching credentials at UC Berkeley. She is a Fellow and Scholar of the American Academy of Audiology and is certified by the American Board of Audiology. She earned her undergraduate degree in developmental psychology with honors from UC Santa Barbara.
Dr. Baxter started her career as a teacher of hearing impaired children, which inspired her to change her focus to audiology. Prior to joining Pacific Hearing Service, she worked as a research audiologist at the VA Medical Center in Martinez, CA, followed by a stint at Stanford Medical Center performing clinical audiology and research.
She has made important contributions to the field of audiology through publications and presentations at professional meetings, including authoring a chapter for a textbook about establishing a private audiology practice. She was one of the founders of the California Academy of Audiology and served as its treasurer. She was a member of the American Academy of Audiology Task force Nominations Committee in 2015. Dr. Baxter has also been a consultant for multiple startups and major hearing aid manufacturers including Widex, Starkey, ReSound, Phonak, Oticon, Sonic Innovations, Sound ID and EarLens.
In 2014 Pacific Hearing Service became a charter member of the Entheos audiology cooperative. Dr. Baxter currently serves on the Entheos board of directors and leads the student initiative, which provides students with intense practical experience through humanitarian audiology work in third-world countries. Entheos has allowed Jane to discover her newfound passion of bringing hearing smiles to children and adults in Middle East refugee camps, Guatemala, Ecuador, Zambia, Mozambique, South Africa, and other underserved people around the world.
In 2016 Dr. Baxter and her business partner, Dr. Clark, co-founded Pacific Hearing Connection, a nonprofit organization that provides hearing healthcare to those who cannot afford it in the San Francisco Bay Area.
In 2019, Dr. Baxter, Dr. Clark and Pacific Hearing Service won the Leo Doerfler Award from the Academy of Doctors of Audiology for outstanding clinical services in the community throughout their careers. This was the only time the academy has made the award to an entire practice in addition to the individual awards.
Dr. Baxter is part of a long line of professionals dedicated to the needs of those with hearing impairment. Her grandfather, Frank Baxter, M.D., was the first Eye, Ear, Nose and Throat physician in the East Bay. Many people in the community remember her father, William Baxter, M.D., who retired from his Ear, Nose and Throat practice in Los Altos in 1998. Her daughter, Dr. Ariel Baxterbeck Fruendt, entered the audiology profession in 2013 and has joined Pacific Hearing Service after working in private practice and serving on the clinical faculty at Northwestern University’s Au.D. program. Her other daughter, Allison, is a pediatric hospitalist on Long Island.
Jane’s husband, Steve, retired from the technology industry (Cisco and Apple) and is now working more than full-time at Pacific Hearing Service as the IT and operations manager. You may see him covering the front desk at times. He accompanies Jane on humanitarian trips and has become an earmold wizard, making hundreds of earmolds for children and adults.
In her hours away from the office, Jane enjoys exercising, hiking, yoga, cooking, reading, going to the theater, and visiting her grandchildren in New York.