Profiles

May 6, 2012 by Mark Whittaker

Career-changer aims to help boomers in ‘third stage’

Stuart Himmelfarb has been studying the baby boomer generation, and what he’s learning is the foundation of his new career — running an organization to engage Jewish boomers with their cultural and religious communities.

“I consider myself an extremely fortunate guy because I’m able to embark on this initiative, which not only connects me to the Jewish community, but also fires up my entrepreneurial zeal. We see an incredible opportunity to understand what boomers are doing, thinking feeling at this stage of their lives,” the 60-year-old New York City resident said.

The new organization, called B3/The Jewish Boomer Platform, was born from research conducted by Stuart’s business partner, David Elcott, the Taub Professor of Public Service at New York University’s Wagner School. The research indicated that while the organized Jewish community has many initiatives for young people and for the geriatric community, there was nothing focused on baby boomers. [Read more…]

April 13, 2012 by Mark Whittaker

Chef cooks up new career in real estate

For a short guy, Reid Weinbrom could hit you really hard on the football field. He wasn’t athletic-looking, but he put every ounce of effort he could muster into our neighborhood football and basketball games.

Reid wasn’t much fun to block or tackle, I remember, because he just wouldn’t give up. That was 40 years ago in our suburban York, Pa., neighborhood. He sometimes was the butt of jokes because of his size and because he stuttered, a problem he conquered with hours and hours of practice in front of a mirror at home.

Now Reid, 56, puts that same kind of effort into his three-year-old career as a real estate agent in his hometown. Listen to him talk about his new job: “I love it. I absolutely love it. I love the competition. It’s a real contact sport. I love it. I love pitting myself against the best agents there are here in York.” [Read more…]

April 9, 2012 by Mark Whittaker

Educator adds podcaster, video producer, web designer to resume

Jane Bluestein is a teacher, education consultant, author and speaker, but to advance her work she’s creating new careers for herself — web designer, podcaster, video producer and e-publisher.

Jane, 60, has written books and lectured around the world about adult-child relationships and their effect on motivation, discipline, learning and teaching. By almost any measure, she’s been successful.

But the market for education consultants has slowed as school systems struggle to find money for pencils, papers and to heat their buildings, let alone for professional development. So the Albuquerque, N.M., resident is putting her impressive reservoir of energy into learning some new skills and building her online marketing efforts.

“This is the first time in about 25 years that I don’t have any speaking engagements. I have no paid work right now. So the podcasting and website, email marketing, all these other projects I have going on — all started earlier — now have taken on a slightly different sense of urgency.”

She’s optimistic that that the demand for her consulting and speaking engagements will increase eventually, but in the meantime, “I’ve needed to look for other ways to get my message out there. And that has created, in essence, a new career for me.” [Read more…]

April 2, 2012 by Mark Whittaker

Career change leads to flexibility, less stress

A seven-month illness knocked Brace Cooper out of the printing-press sales business in which he’d spent most of his career. As he recovered, he attended job-networking meetings without knowing exactly what he was seeking.

“If I could have continued to be a senior vice president selling heavy machinery around the world from St. Louis, I would have done that,” said Cooper, 64, who lives in the St. Louis, Mo., suburb of Weldon Spring.

“I don’t think that was an option … It just wasn’t. If you’re out there looking for a job, and you’re 60 years old, your options are limited,” Cooper said. His options were further limited because he didn’t want to move.

“For me, it was a change that I was sort of forced into,” he said.

Thanks to his networking efforts in the fall of 2007, he met someone [Read more…]

March 29, 2012 by Mark Whittaker

After seven career changes, he’s a professional

By his count, Marc Miller has changed careers seven times, and he figures he’s got plenty of advice to share with others who are thinking about changing careers later in life.

That’s how he arrived at his current occupation, “career design specialist.” The Austin, Texas, resident founded Career Pivot early in 2011 to help Baby Boomers take a planned approach to career changes.

A conversation with Miller is an insightful, winding trip that weaves his own experiences with career advice and a bit of philosophy about Baby Boomers, who are now somewhere between 48 and 66 years old.

“One of the things that’s very typical of our generation, we made changes when opportunities appeared. Very rarely did we, as a generation, create our own opportunities. We as a generation were raised by our parents to be employees, to go work for father-like, paternal organizations that would take care of us.” That model doesn’t work anymore, he said.

“As a result, most of us are used to looking for opportunities rather than making opportunities.”

Miller, now in his mid-50s, started his own career transformation after [Read more…]

Career-changer aims to help boomers in ‘third stage’

Chef cooks up new career in real estate

Educator adds podcaster, video producer, web designer to resume

Career change leads to flexibility, less stress

After seven career changes, he’s a professional

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