Related Reading
The Encore Career Handbook: How to Make a Living and a Difference in the Second Half of Life by Marci Alboher
The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who've Lived the Longest by Dan Buettner
Encore Careers
Encore careers are increasingly common among Americans age 50 and over. An estimated nine million boomers have found their second acts, and more than 30 million others say that they would like to make a career changes. If you are considering joining this movement, please find vetted resources below.
Recorded Webinar
Encore Career Strategies with the Hiatt Career Center
(Originally aired: Tuesday, June 26, 2012)
What are the strategies for making a smooth transition to your next chapter? Join panelists (view panelist bios) Linda Breton '67, Director, Affiliate Relations atReServe, and Carol Greenfield, Founding Director of Discovering What's Next, to learn more in an interactive, online discussion moderated by Andrea Dine, Associate Director of Career Development of the Hiatt Career Center. View the recorded program.
Resources: Information
- AARP: Work & Retirement includes articles and resources addressing, finding a job, life at work, recareering, retirement planning and social security.
- Next Avenue is a major new PBS system website designed to reach America's booming 50+ population as they plan for and literally define a new life stage.
- Encore.org includes fellowship info, research, policy, publications, videos, continuing education, and an online community.
- Center on Aging and Work, Boston College includes research, publications and quick facts.
- RetirementJobs offers career advice articles for people over 50 and job postings. It also identifies companies most-suited to older workers and matches them with active, productive, conscientious, mature adults seeking a job or project that matches their lifestyle.
Resources: Work & Volunteer Programs
- ReServe is an innovative resource that matches continuing professionals 55+ with the nonprofits that need them.
- Discovering What's Next inspires a new way of thinking about life and work after 50 through personal discovery, peer support, focused resources and dynamic programming. It is located in Newton, MA.
- AARP Experience Corps enables Americans older than 55 years to participate in stipended and volunteer positions to tutor and mentor children in urban public schools in communities across the country.
- SOAR 55 is a program of Newton Community Service Center, and part of a national network of volunteer agencies mobilizing adults age 55 and over to contribute their skills and experience to help strengthen and expand the capacity of local community service organizations in Newton and MetroWest. SOAR 55 provides a personalized and professional volunteer search through our links to 80 nonprofits and community service organizations to facilitate the best match to meet our volunteers’ interests, skills and schedule. Volunteer assignments include direct service, leadership and management consulting roles.
- Generations Incorporated is a Boston nonprofit that engages active older adults in results-driven intergenerational programs that inspire students and improve schools. It operates an Experience Corps program in conjunction with local public schools.
- Experience Works is the nation’s leading provider of training, employment, and community service for low-income older people.
Linda Breton '67, LCSW, MPA, Director, Affiliate Relations, ReServe
Linda has spent her entire professional career as a clinician or senior manager in various mental health and human service organizations in Massachusetts, Illinois and New York. In 2010, following a decade as Assistant Executive Director at Westchester Jewish Community Services, she retired from full-time employment. Still committed to “repairing the world,” she works part-time at ReServe, a New York City-based nonprofit that matches skilled professionals, age 55+ (ReServists), with rewarding part-time service opportunities at nonprofit organizations and public institutions for which they earn a modest stipend. Initially charged with bringing ReServe to Westchester County where she lives, Linda is now the Director of Affiliate Relations overseeing the ReServe program in Baltimore, Miami, Milwaukee and Newark.
Carol Greenfield holds a master’s degree from the Harvard School of Public Health and has devoted her entire professional life to developing programs that empower older adults. Her career accomplishments include developing an award winning peer counseling program called SHINE as a consultant to the Executive Office of Elder Affairs in Mass, serving as Executive Director of the New England Employee Benefits Council, and advocating for older adults to use new technology by founding Senior Web Solutions, a training and support business. As an advocate for mid-life adults facing retirement decisions, she created the “How Can I Afford Retirement?” program – a popular investor education series offered first at the Boston Public Library and then at libraries around the country.
Her work with older adults and their life transitions has only grown as Carol herself has reached an age considered “older”. Beginning to think of her own transition and that of her friends, she was inspired by the concept of viewing age as an asset and NOT a liability. Carol envisioned the need for a one-stop community resource for baby boomers transitioning to retirement. With community support she launched Discovering What’s Next in 2002 and became its founding president. Carol strongly believes that all older adults want and need to remain engaged for their own well-being and their communities. DWN programs advance this belief through a peer-support model initiated and delivered primarily by community volunteers. DWN offers programs for large and small groups as well as individual opportunities for discussions with “Transition Navigators”, a team of trained peers who provide information, evaluation, and resource recommendations. Since its inception, DWN has attracted thousands of attendees from the greater-Boston area to its “Transition Talks”, forums, workshops, and annual Encore Summit. A recent focus of DWN’s work has been its Transition to Encore Careers program, funded by a grant from the Tufts Health Plan Foundation, to assist adults in their exploration of new visions of work and civic engagement in later life. Carol is also a founding member of the Greater Boston Encore Action Network. Carol is now working to bring together JVS, a leading workforce development organization, and DWN in an ambitious collaboration to replicate ReServe – a stipended work and service program - in the greater Boston area.
Carol was recently honored as the 2012 recipient of the Louis Lowy Distinguished Service Award from the Massachusetts Gerontology Association.