Jane H. Todd was active in the women's suffrage movement and on local committees in Tarrytown, New York. She was a committeewoman of the Republican Party and organized the first Negro Republican Women's Club, and the Republican Business and Professional Women's Club in Westchester, New York. She was elected to the New York State Assembly from Westchester County in 1935 and remained there for ten years, serving on the Rules Committee, the Public Education Committee, and the Public Welfare Relief Committee, and chaired the Republican Conference Committee and the Social Welfare Committee. She sponsored legislation for women including her Equal Pay Law prohibiting wage discrimination against women.

Todd was the first vice president of the National Order of Women Legislators; a charter member of the Albany and Tarrytown Business and Professional Women's Clubs; a member of the Tarrytown Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, the National Advisory Council of Junior Achievement, the Homemaking Education Council of the University of the State of New York, the American Woman's Association, and the Westchester County Children's Association; and an honorary member of the National Secretaries Association, Albany Chapter, and of Phi Chi Theta, New York Alumnae Chapter, Business College Graduates' Association. In January 1945, Todd was appointed Deputy Commissioner of the New York State Department of Commerce. The same year Governor Thomas E. Dewey appointed her Chairman of the new New York Woman's Council, a group of 34 women who worked with Todd under the aegis of the Department of Commerce to widen economic opportunities for women in New York State. She developed a Woman's Program within the department to provide guidance for women starting out or already established in business.