Mika Brzezinski, Brooke Shields Celebrate Women 50+: ‘I’m Just Starting’
While the media has long placed a premium on youth, in recent years there’s been a much-needed movement to celebrate the many achievements of women over 50 and show that young women have a lot to look forward to as they age.
To that end, last week at New York City’s historic Rainbow Room Morning Joe host and founder of the Know Your Value platform Mika Brzezinski brought together a diverse group of dozens of 50+ women—among them entrepreneurs, actresses and even trailblazing NASA engineers—for her fourth annual Know Your Value 50 Over 50 luncheon. As she described in her opening remarks, for many of us, fears around aging have been “tackled and transformed into wonderment and possibility.”
50 Over 50
The event, which celebrated 200 women working in the areas of impact, investment, innovation and lifestyle, as featured on Forbes’ 50 Over 50 list, offered a powerful reminder that women can achieve their wildest dreams at any stage of life, and Woman’s World was fortunate to be in attendance. Read on to see what we learned from the event’s centerpiece panel, in which Brzezinski moderated a conversation with Brooke Shields, Obama Foundation CEO Valerie Jarrett and financial guru Suze Orman.
Brooke Shields talks new haircare line focused on aging with confidence
Having become famous as a preternaturally beautiful child star in the ’70s, model and actress Brooke Shields was sexualized from a heartbreakingly young age. Given this, the now 59-year-old has a unique perspective on getting older and how youth-driven beauty standards can ultimately be harmful to women.
50 Over 50
With the recent launch of her haircare line, Commence, Shields is now an entrepreneur, and she described her dedication to centering her brand around age-related concerns without just focusing on menopause, saying, “It’s brilliant that menopause is a part of the narrative and part of the conversation. But they’ve jumped over and just labeled us as menopause. And I wanted to hear from women what they wanted and what they were feeling.”
As she described her current feelings about aging, “I wanted to hear from other women over 40 how they felt that they were being received and treated by society, by culture, and women feel overlooked, underserved . . . I was so shocked by how universal this feeling was. Your children start to leave, you’re over 40, and all of a sudden you’ve got one foot in the grave, and people are counting you out, and they’re not . . . appreciating your value, and you know . . . knowing your value can come at different times, and it has come in different ways and different times during my life.”
Valerie Jarrett on finding a new career path after motherhood
Valerie Jarrett, the former government official and CEO of the Obama Foundation, has one of the most impressive resumes around, but in the panel she revealed that she originally planned to be a lawyer, only to realize the field wasn’t the right fit for her. When she had her daughter, Laura, rather than continuing to be a lawyer or settling down as a stay-at-home mom, she decided to forge a new path entirely.
50 Over 50
Jarrett recalled, “It was such a wakeup call, because I’ve always been really proud of my mother because of the work that she did in early childhood education, and I knew if I stayed at this law firm, miserable, that Laura would never be proud of me, and I wouldn’t be the kind of role model for her that my mother had been for me. And so having Laura really gave me the courage to kind of abandon that plan and for the first time, listen to the quiet voice inside of me, which is actually the most important one, and follow my passion.”
Suze Orman’s simple advice for financial success
Rounding out the panel of accomplished 50+ women was Suze Orman, who detailed her long journey from waitress to financial guru, and spoke candidly about the sexism she initially faced when trying to break into the finance world in the ’80s. Orman admitted that learning how to manage one’s money can be intimidating, but she’s long advocated for making small changes in day-to-day spending, which all add up to a big impact.
50 Over 50
When Brzezinski asked Orman for the one-word advice she’d give to women, she simply answered, “Save.” We can’t argue with that!
After seeing all of these brilliant women speak, we’re more convinced than ever that midlife and beyond is a time to, as Brzezinski put it, “tap into a groundswell,” and embrace one’s innate wisdom and creativity like never before.
Original post by Abbey Bender from www.womansworld.com
