Reinvent Yourself

At age 29, Linda Olson was strapped inside a van that stalled on a railroad track. A train hit the van and she went on to live her very full life as a mother, radiologist, and triple amputee. At 71, she has published her first book, a memoir called  GONE (https://amzn.to/2TQf85q), and is newly diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease.  After the train accident, she says, “I had a choice to make: Do I want to be happy or not?” There were people standing at the end of her hospital bed unable to look her in the eye when she decided “I want to make them happy and so I focused on their mental attitudes.  It worked. They put me in a wheelchair, I went out to the garden and started making lists of what I am going to do when I got back home.” Growing up, Linda’s mother would post a list of her daily required activities on her door and the focus—both then and after the accident-- helped her get through each day feeling accomplished. “I still have the lists [I made that day],” she says. “They got me back into rehab and after four months I walked a mile with my prosthetic legs.” Today she is still pushing the boundaries of her physical abilities. “After 41 years there are new things I have to figure out,” she says, "—like filing my nails with one hand.” Her husband used to do it for her, but just the other day, Linda says she designed a way to do it herself. “It’s about accepting, adapting, innovating. Make a game of it, “ she says. 

“I’m a very passionate person,” says San-Juan-born Cindy Golbert, 77, who has just begun a new Vlog called  Original Cin (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k972fDJ5ekQ&feature=youtu.be).  Passion informs all of her  reinventions throughout her lifetime as she moved from beginner at Young & Rubicam to tennis pro, to PR for a jet set hotel, to real estate, to aerobics instructor (“I was the Jane Fonda of Puerto Rico!”), to fashion designer,  to furniture restorer, to property manager, and through a variety of marriages.“The opportunities for reinvention are not just career-based, you can reinvent how you think and how you react to situations.” What she loves is watching the shy, unsure woman hide in the back of aerobics class eventually migrate to the first row as she gains confidence or restoring a broken heirloom to look like new. “My motto is, 'Leave people and places better than you found them,’” she says.

“I didn’t set a stone ’till I was 55,” says Susan Lister Locke, who owns the eponymous gallery on Nantucket (https://susanlisterlocke.com/) and was voted Best Jeweler on Nantucket from 2017-2020. “Real estate had slowed to a crawl. I had been there for the booming years. But it wasn’t working and I didn’t see it coming back.” Metalsmithing had been a passion which Susan had explored in schools and workshops in the States and Italy.  She had a studio at home and when the real estate dried up, a great location for a shop came up, and she decided to take the leap. “I didn’t have a lot of money so I let the big boys do diamonds,” she says. “The first stone I bought was a colored stone. I worked with pearls and Australian bolder opals. I wasn’t a gemologist.” What Locke especially loves about the engagement and wedding rings she creates: “Those are heirlooms; they get passed down….You’re part of their story.” Her advice for those trying to make the leap from corporate to art:” Be prepared for greatness. I wasn’t.”

Linda Mauro went from FIT (Fashion Institute of Technology) to showroom sales, fashion forecasting, a buying office, and eventually running a New York showroom for west coast designers. “I was Carrie Bradshaw [of Sex in the City],” she says about the crazy, fashion-infused hard-charging lifestyle. “I paid my dues.” When she got fired, she regrouped her life outside of the city and applied to Berkeley College which had an opening in admissions and recruiting.   “They listed the same skills that I was using in the showroom: sales, managing a budget, goals,” she says. "I was able to bring those skills into higher education.” Today, Mauro is the COO of Berkeley College of New Jersey and she’s been there 20 years.  She says: “Lots of the students are career changers like me."

“Your career is a journey. It’s rare to find a person for whom it’s a direct line,” says social entrepreneur, CEO and Founder of Working for Women (https://www.workingforwomen.org/), Beth Bengtson.  Indeed, Bengtson studied to be a photographer at the Fashion Institute of Technology and jumped into the early dot-com universe and even lived through the bust. After meeting her husband and starting a family, she “realized that business could be a force for social good” and took a position as VP of Social Responsibility—teaching that corporation “how to think about doing good and being a good citizen.” Laid off during the Great Recession, she decided to pursue the idea of social responsibility by creating W4W, a service that helps for-profit business invest resources in social initiatives that benefit women. Her leadership awakening happened when she was scouring the world for the perfect W4W CEO because “my definition of a leader is everything I wasn’t: charismatic, outgoing, with sales and business development,” she says. A coach to challenge her to lead.  And the rest, as they say, is her-story.

Alexis Mersel of Instant Pot cookbook fame ("Everyday Instant Pot"; "Healthy Instant Pot"; "Instant Pot Soups") grew up “fueled for fashion.” After studying in Paris, she landed dream jobs at Elle, Harper's Bazaar, In Style and Mirabella. When the digital boom hit, she abandoned print and jumped in, working for fashionmall.com and later Martha Stewart and the Food Network. Moving between San Francisco and London allowed her to connect with a London roommate who ran a bookstore with a cafe which lured Alexis into cooking.  Still lacking “family responsibilities,” she quit her job to attend a cooking school in Ireland eventually landing back in San Francisco as a baker. Baking moved her into food styling, which moved her into cookbooks.  “Even though I’m a classic type A, I wasn’t thinking of a plan,” she says. “The best thing in retrospect was NOT to have a plan. It let things be.” Her advice for other type As who want to play it free-spirit: “If your gut says yes, say yes. It’s scary. But that’s where you build confidence for your next role." 

Cyndie Burkhardt was living the corporate dream: handling $100,000 marketing campaigns, meeting incredible people, and traveling the world.  But she was also working 60 hours a week, experiencing night sweats, black outs, and brain fog so bad that she couldn’t read the newspaper. Self care, she says, “wasn’t on my radar.”  One day after leaving work exhausted, she got into bed, and couldn’t get out. “I was paralyzed; I couldn’t move.”  With no doctor able to diagnose her, she sought help from alternative practitioners and a nutritionist who called it adrenal fatigue. After recovering, Burkhardt entered nutrition school (“to help others...so they won’t get sick!”), pursued her interest in writing and photography (www.photo-diaries.com), and became a health coach. Last year she wanted to study alternative medicines around the world. She sold all her possessions and booked a trip for 12 months in 12 places but was forced to end her trip at the 3/4 mark when the pandemic pinned her down in Split, Croatia. “A pandemic stopped me dead in my tracks and it’s wonderful,” she says, noting that she walks to the beach every morning at dawn for a swim before settling down for work. " I’m going to listen for the answer [about what’s next] and figure things out.”   

“I was pregnant with my third kid when I opted out,” says Kelley Biskupiak, co-founder of PrepareToLaunchU.com, a one-stop source for instruction, inspiration and community for women navigating a maternity leave, mid-career pivot, or childcare break.  “I didn’t realize when I made the choice what a sense of loss it was going to be. I could go all in on momhood...but it was not so fulfilling. I had to ask: who are you and where do you want to go?”  She joined forces with Susan Rietano, a mother of four with experience in tech and placement and launched the site. “Women approach the next [job] opportunity with too much gratitude and apology,” says Rietano. “[We] want them to thank you for being at the opposite side of the table.”

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“I’ve been OCD my whole life,” says Anita Devlin.  “I realized that was why people liked having me come stay with them—because I reorganized their homes.”  Devlin who has been a casting director, co-produced films, and sold luxury real estate put all her experience together and created We Heave Ho (https://weheaveho.com/), a company that will do anything you need help with—from organizing your closet to cleaning out your barn or helping young adults decorate their first apartment.  But even better: she makes comedic reality-show-style films about the process—starring you (and her!) of course! “I love working with people my age and helping them downsize,” she says.  “The dynamics between the husband and wife…you’re the therapist, too.” The videos, she says, “get the conversations going.” She says: “It’s very rewarding to help people and when you walk away they feel orderly and clean.”