age as advantage 🎂

age as advantage 🎂

August 12, 2026 • Issue No. 42

I’m still shaking the sand out of my bag from Beach Weekend, a sleepover party with my former-coworker-turned-friend out on the Jersey Shore. Since I joined the group in 2023, couples have become fiancés, and spouses have become parents — 3 babies have been born!

Every baby’s first year at the beach is an absolute cry fest: the sun is too hot, the water is scary, and sleeping away from home completely disrupts any early sleep training routines. By the second year, the toddlers are pulling off their hats, splashing around, and scarfing down handfuls of sand when you turn your head. As each year passes, I see these former blobs become more aware, verbal, and independent. It makes me think about how I’ve changed and developed from year to year, too. I may not have gotten new teeth or grown taller, but I’ve definitely learned some new words and ways of doing things. We don’t stop learning and growing just because we’re adults.

The idea of aging can feel scary. You might feel like you’re at risk of losing touch. For many women, there are specific fears around attractiveness. Money spent on needles and injections would have you believe that the worse thing you can be (or look) is old. But that’s not fair. Old means more life lived, more lessons learned, more experience, more obstacles overcome. Getting older should be just as good for us now as it was when we were wobbling around in diapers.

As television journalist Mika Brzezinski writes in her introduction of this year’s “Forbes 50 over 50” list, “Age is not an impediment to doing the most meaningful, ambitious and impactful work of your career. In many cases, it is an advantage.” I love this take.

I’m a better teacher now than I was 14 years ago. And I think I’ll be better still in another 14 years.

I’m a better writer now than I was 14 years ago. And I think I’ll be better still in another 14 years.

I knew too little about work to be an executive coach 14 years ago, but I can only imagine the value I’ll be able to offer my clients when I have 14 more years of experience under my belt.

If you believe, as I do, that what you pay attention to grows, then why wouldn’t advanced age — combined with dedicated practice and consistency — lead you to more meaning, more ambition, more impact, and more advantage?

I’d encourage you to take a look through the short blurbs on the 200 women selected this year. There are 50 honorees in 4 categories: lifestyle, impact, innovation, and investment.

Here are some of my favorites:

👩‍🦰 Ree Drummond (57) turned her blog The Pioneer Woman into a Food Network TV show, cookbooks, restaurants and is still going strong.

👩🏽 Komal Shah (56), a former tech executive turned philanthropist who collects women’s art. I got to see her collection when it was on display in 2024. She has work by Simone Leigh, Faith Ringgold, and Firelei Báez. I was obsessed.

👩🏼 Betsey Johnson (84), a super-fun fashion designer who has remained, and will remain, super-fun (she’s on TikTok!)

👩🏼 Julie K. Brown (64), the investigative reporter at Miami Herald who, in her 50s, broke the 2017 and 2018 Jeffrey Epstein stories that led to his arrest.

👩🏿‍🦱 Whoopi Goldberg (70), an EGOT who also founded the All-Women’s Sports Network (which I had no idea about).

And there’s still so many more. Like, Mikie Sherrill (54) the first woman military veteran to become an American governor, Linda E. Johnson (68) the president of the Brooklyn Public Library system, Lisa Gelobter (55) the Chief Technology Officer for NYC, Bernadette Meehan (51) is the CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation, and Christina Maslach (80) the psychologist who created the measuring tool for burnout.

Mika’s introduction asks, “What if we stopped treating 50 as a finish line and started treating it as a starting point?” and I’m like hell yeah. Call me greedy, but I’m not ready to start sunsetting my career just because I’m more than halfway to 50. These women offer something to look forward to because not only do they show us what age can look like, they model what age can do. It’s entirely possible that the best is yet to come.

💎 I’m good now. In time, I’ll be better still.💎 

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