During my three decades as a career coach in Dallas – helping adults replace the conventional personality Type A or Type B with the Type CC (the Career Change Catalyst) – I have experienced an infinite number of “dark nights” of recession similar to our current one. I have survived and thrived despite crisis changes and the rise and collapse of countless industries, including my original profession, teaching. In the mid-70s, Ph.D.’s were driving buses and painting houses. My reality was that a Ph.D. and a dime could get a cup of coffee. Consider the major industries in Dallas that have “boomed and busted:” oil, finance and banking, real estate, telecom corridor and dot coms. As residential real estate faces new challenges, all businesses face threats from international competition.

Published in the April, 2006, newsletter of the National Association of Working Seniors.

Specific Strategies for Breaking the Barriers of Aging

Millions of Americans suffer from the "finished at 50" syndrome. Based on the numerous negative myths that aging automatically brings irreversible mental, physical, psychological, and creative decline, this belief is foolish and potentially deadly for continuing career success.

Unfortunately, much of Corporate America is nourishing this notion and pushing more mature employees out the door. However, there are strategies that we can use to advance one’s career far beyond society’s limits which are based upon concepts of age. The truth is that absolutely no research has validated that chronological age is reliable in determining one’s “functional” age.

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Published in the September, 2001, edition of the Women in Technology International Foundation newsletter, North Texas Chapter

How quickly and tragically our world can change. Earlier I chose the “end of certainty” as the subject for this article aimed at the WITI readers. At that time, I was referring to the seemingly rapid decline of career opportunities in technology related fields. My focus was the necessity to use this unexpected crisis as a time to search creatively first for meaning and then for money in our work life.

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Our workworld is moving rapidly into the Age of Innovation! The key to career success today is quite different from what we were taught in the past. It is not stability and specialization in one field, and the “40 year Womb to Tomb” but flexibility with expertise, creativity and the ability to cross borders and boundaries, to solve problems, meet challenges and work independently, as well as with others. I have labeled this the “ Yo Yo Career Model – You’re On Your Own ”.