4-Quarter Lives

Joining Avivah Wittenberg-Cox for this episode of 4-Quarter Lives is Yvonne Sonsino. Yvonne is one of the pioneers in the longevity space, with a 40-year career focused on the financial, actuarial and corporate sides of the ageing equation. She is global co-Leader of consulting firm Mercer’s Next Stage consulting division, and works with companies across the global to develop longevity strategies around the future of work and seize the opportunities of the longevity economy. She’s also the author of The New Rules of Living Longer: How to Survive Your Longer Life. And she partners with the World Economic Forum on a working group on Retiring Retirement. She’s not shy of sharing some uncomfortable – but urgently necessary – truths about money, pensions and ageing, and in particular the gender disparities for women. Want a good idea of the current state of play on where companies stand? Yvonne is the person to give it.* For Yvonne’s book & website: https://www.newrulesoflivinglonger.com* For Mercer’s diagnostic tool to help companies think about the issue of longevity and employment: https://www.mercer.com/our-thinking/career/redesigning-later-life.html* For Mercer’s analysis of how to fix the gender pension gap: https://www.mercer.com/our-thinking/how-to-fix-the-gender-pension-gap.html Get full access to 4-Quarter Lives | Elderberries at elderberries.substack.com/subscribe

Avivah Wittenberg-Cox’s guest this week is Isabel Saint Malo. After two decades working as a Panamanian diplomat at the UN, on Latin American and Caribbean issues, she ran for office and became Panama’s first female Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister. Rejecting calls to run for the top job as President, she focused instead on the issues she cared most about – notably youth employment and advancement of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals. She also became known for the courageous – and sometimes unpopular - positions she took on issues such as LGBTQ rights. Most recently, however, during 2022 she has stepped back from this full-on trajectory to take part in Harvard’s Advanced Leadership Initiative, which aims to help leaders like her refocus their energies and empower them for even greater social impact. Isabel describes this as an opportunity to transition from her second quarter ‘Mad House’ to a third quarter of inner peace and prioritization. She says that ‘you need to learn to go on living’. While you don’t necessarily need to go back to school or a classroom, a program like ALI is a wonderful opportunity to stop and take stock.For Harvard’s Advanced Leadership Initiative: https://www.advancedleadership.harvard.edu Get full access to 4-Quarter Lives | Elderberries at elderberries.substack.com/subscribe

In this first episode of 4-Quarter Lives, host Avivah Wittenberg-Cox talks with Paul Irving. Paul is the archetype of the stories this podcast would like to share. First, he’s a role model of Third Quarter re-inventions. He went back to school in his late 50s, after a successful 30 plus-year career in the law. He moved from Los Angeles to Cambridge to go through Harvard’s Advanced Leadership (ALI) program in 2010, soon after it started. This program, which Avivah herself is taking part in, provides people in their third quarter of life opportunities to explore new directions, with a particular emphasis on social impact. Post-ALI, Paul returned to L.A. to serve as president of a prominent think tank, the Milken Institute, and founded its Center for the Future of Aging – where he has now spent more than a decade engaging with an entirely new world. An advocate for the power of lifelong learning, Paul shares the impact his late education had on his life. Then we explore how the longevity topic has exploded in the time he has been at Milken – from knocking on doors that wouldn’t answer to being awarded red carpets (and awards) around the globe. He gives us today’s state of play, for individuals making transitions in midlife and for organisations. And he looks forward to what’s next – and what you may want to do about it.Key Reports* Age Forward Cities for 2030* Silver to Gold: The Business of AgeingRelated Roles & Organisations* https://milkeninstitute.org/centers/center-for-the-future-of-aging* https://gero.usc.edu/* https://encore.org/* https://nam.edu/initiatives/grand-challenge-healthy-longevity/global-roadmap-for-healthy-longevity/* https://dci.stanford.edu/ Get full access to 4-Quarter Lives | Elderberries at elderberries.substack.com/subscribe

Get full access to 4-Quarter Lives | Elderberries at elderberries.substack.com/subscribe

Get full access to 4-Quarter Lives | Elderberries at elderberries.substack.com/subscribe