Bernie Borges [00:00:00]:
Simon Chan, welcome to the Midlife Fulfill podcast, a maximum episode.
Simon Chan [00:00:05]:
Thank you, Bernie. Pleasure to be here.
Bernie Borges [00:00:08]:
Pleasure to have you. I am looking forward to our conversation on an interesting topic, really fascinating topic. I don’t think I’ve actually discussed this topic before. But first, let me introduce you to my listener. You are the founder and CEO of Adapt with Intent. Love that name. You’re a consulting firm that works with leaders and educators and organizations, really helping them reframe their thinking and and just the way they go about, working across different life stages. You support senior leadership teams developing a longevity strategy.
Bernie Borges [00:00:43]:
We’ll talk about that. To unlock new opportunities by reimagining the customer and workplace structures required to support 100 year lives. That’s a pretty big initiative. And, Simon, you are also the cochair of the Nextel Collaborative, which is a global alliance of colleges and universities with a vision for the future of higher education. And I just saw your post on LinkedIn about that. So congratulations about that. But, anyway, I’m excited to talk to you about this topic. So, again, welcome to the Midlife Fulfill podcast on this Maxim Web episode.
Bernie Borges [00:01:18]:
I’m theming this episode, Simon, around the topic or the theme of embracing the longevity revolution. So if we could begin our conversation with what the heck is longevity. Let’s begin with your definition of longevity.
Simon Chan [00:01:34]:
Well, I think the the basics of, to jump right in, the basics of longevity is just how long people will live. But I think within this context, it’s really around the fact that people are living longer lives. So there’s increasing longevity from a societal perspective, and really the work that I do, and this longevity revolution that you’re talking about, I think it’s just kind of getting underway really around how to longer lives, potentially 100 year lives, impact all aspects of society, whether it be businesses, higher education, housing, etcetera. It’s one of those strategic trends and things that we often kind of mention in passing, but seems to be an opportunity for organizations and institutions, and really our social infrastructure to rethink how they adapt their customer experiences or workforces to accommodate these much longer lives.
Bernie Borges [00:02:33]:
You know, one part of what you said that really resonates, it really strikes me is how longevity impacts all of society. It’s pretty big.
Bernie Borges [00:02:43]:
Yeah.
Bernie Borges [00:02:43]:
Right? That’s pretty big. So, you know, one of the things that I say often, I probably say it a little bit too often, is let’s not try to boil the ocean. It’s a cliche that I probably overuse, Simon. So so maybe we can bring it down a little bit to what leaders should be thinking about as it relates to understanding longevity. Leaders in higher ed and leaders in business, what what do they need to be thinking about and understanding around longevity?
Simon Chan [00:03:11]:
Yeah. I think the the first thing to understand is how much life expectancy has increased. It’s almost doubled in the last century. And so I think people kind of know that and people know that we’re living longer. But I think for leaders to fully understand the implications of the fact that we have these lives that are probably 2 times in length versus the turn of the century. And what our structures have typically been built for is really kind of a 3 stage life, where we tend to kind of work in the first part of our life, sorry, get learn in the first part of our life, work, you know, for 40 years, and then have this shorter period of retirement. And that makes a lot of sense when you have, you know, 65, 70 year lives. It makes a lot of sense when people are kind of moving in lockstep, going to school at the same time, working in the same industries, etcetera.
Simon Chan [00:04:00]:
But because of this longevity trend and because of other factors, longevity isn’t the only thing obviously that’s impacting the world, technology, globalization, etcetera. When you have much more extended lives where lives might be 90 to a 100 years in length, same kind of linear everybody moves in a same three stage life. You have this much more fluid multi stage life where people can move in and out of work. Somebody may go back to school at 40. Somebody may work for, full time for a period of time and decide to go part time. And really specifically around that midlife period, which is obviously a salient to your your listeners, is that people are starting to think about, well, midlife is a lot longer than it used to be, right? We’ve got this increased longevity, but for the most part, what we’ve done from a societal perspective is we’ve just kind of tacked it on to the end of our lives, right? We we retire still at, you know, 60, 65, and we have this extended period of leisure now where people typically in the past with shorter lives, maybe we’re dealing with health issues, maybe we’re tired from very laborious roles and had a much shorter period of time. When you have this extended period in midlife or this new longevity, I would think that when people take a step back and look at if I were to give you an extra 20 to 30 years of longevity, would you necessarily tack it on to the end of your life or would you actually potentially redistribute it throughout your life or change how you navigate that midlife. And I think that’s the part that leaders, when they take the time to take a step back to understand the impacts of these longer lives, start to come to the realization that there’s a huge opportunity here for them to modernize how they, potentially work with customers or potentially how they deal with their internal workforce.
Bernie Borges [00:05:51]:
So then how should leaders be thinking about with their workforce? Right? Their workforce, their go to market strategy, their, their operations, their productivity. There’s just so many implications. How should leaders and and I guess maybe as I think about this question in real time, in the moment, because it’s not like a pre planned question. In the moment, I’m thinking about, well, there’s big businesses that are like large global enterprises. There’s midsize businesses. There’s small businesses. I mean, I can think of a small business where the owner is, I think, 82
Bernie Borges [00:06:27]:
Mhmm.
Bernie Borges [00:06:28]:
And and going fairly strong. But again again, you know, one one little anecdotal data point. So given breadth and depth of organization size, but yet society is made up of 1,000 or probably millions of businesses, how should leaders be thinking about this longevity as they look at their business and all the the aspects that make it up?
Bernie Borges [00:06:54]:
Yeah. So the way I
Simon Chan [00:06:55]:
think about this is, because we because of big trends like longevity and technology, a lot of the techniques that organizations will use to try to fully understand the complexities of some of these changes is really doing work with customers. So, doing work around journey mapping or trying to put themselves into the shoes of their customers or their workforce. And following through following them through their journey to identify how actually are they traveling through life. Right? How how is their buying journey changing? How is their, journey as an employee changing? And when you look through it through the lens of those individuals, you start to realize that impacts of longevity, they’re actually
Bernie Borges [00:07:35]:
already living some of these changes. So in the
Simon Chan [00:07:36]:
case of your, you know, your 82 year old founder or business owner, he’s already living a different way retiring than the traditional retirement.
Bernie Borges [00:07:49]:
And so I would
Simon Chan [00:07:49]:
say you look at it from 2 angles. 1 is you actually get on the ground and you spend some time looking at your customer journey, looking at your workforce journey. And then take a look to see whether the research backs it up. Right? So in the case of your 82 year old, your your business owner, there’s actually research out there that shows Edward Jones and a company called AgeWave that does work in the longevity field. They’ve been able to find talking to pre retirees and retirees that over half of retirees now see, retirement as a new chapter in life versus that traditional view of rest and relaxation. Over half now are starting to say, hey, you know what? I wanna work in some way, shape or form. Maybe that’s part time work, maybe that’s paid or unpaid work, but they wanna stay engaged. And so your example is actually, one that, is very, very real.
Simon Chan [00:08:41]:
It’s it’s actually is supported by the millions that are changing. But for specific businesses, I think it’s a combination of looking at their own data on their customers, but also actually doing the the the actual on the ground journey mapping to understand, hey. You are living longer. What’s changed? What what needs what needs have emerged that you didn’t have before? So in the case of, say, an organization big or small when it comes to their workforce, they may have people who are older adults that traditionally would have retired at 60 years old, but the sentiment in their view of what’s changed is, you know what, why am I going to retire at 60 when I can I like what I’m doing, I’m engaged, I want to continue to do it? Maybe I don’t want to do it in the same way that I did it before, and but I want to do it in a more flexible way. Where are the opportunities for that organization to adapt how they manage their workforce to accommodate the flexibility that they need? Because, you know, the data will show us that one of the top things CEOs of all sizes are concerned about is talent and knowledge retention, right? And so again, these are some of those and kind of looking at, where do the macro trends meet the reality of their customer or their kind of
Bernie Borges [00:09:47]:
their workforce. Yeah. You know,
Simon Chan [00:09:47]:
Simon, I’m in the US. You’re in Canada. And at the time of
Bernie Borges [00:09:52]:
this recording,
Bernie Borges [00:09:53]:
we we just had Labor Day here in the US. And Labor Day is always a Monday, so it’s a holiday. And, by late Monday, I was thinking to myself, you know, I’m looking forward to going back to work tomorrow. And, I don’t think I’m unusual in that regard. And I’m in my sixties. I’m I’m like, I missed the memo about retiring at 60 or 65 because I’m past that. And I missed that memo. And and here here it is Monday on a holiday looking forward to going to work on Tuesday.
Bernie Borges [00:10:26]:
And I think I’m in I’m probably in pretty good company in that regard. And so why don’t we transition a little bit in this discussion? You’ve got something that I think you call, like, the 3 pillars of longevity. How does that fit into this whole conversation?
Bernie Borges [00:10:42]:
Yeah. So when I think about kind
Simon Chan [00:10:44]:
of the 3 pillars, and there’s more obviously, but the 3 pillars of kind of societal change that needs to support increasing longevity, it comes down to, you know, the workplace, how we learn and how we fund these longer lives. So kind of like work, learn, fund. And the reason why I think these are really important pillars is, you know, there are individuals, as I mentioned through the research, that are saying they want a different life path or they want to maybe navigate midlife in a different way. But my experience has it been for the most part, these are kind of done on kind of a do it yourself basis because the structures haven’t been put in place to support those individuals. So if I’m an individual who is working at an organization who doesn’t do does love coming into work on a, you know, thinking about Labor Day and being excited about coming to work. But I started to think about, you know, maybe I don’t want to do it full time anymore. We want to do it in a bit of a different way, a more flexible way. I have to go have an individual conversation with my manager to say, Hey, I’m thinking about retiring in a different way.
Simon Chan [00:11:47]:
How might you be we be able to support each other? I still want to lend my expertise off exercise where every individual is kind of trying to jury rig
Bernie Borges [00:11:54]:
it and figure out how to create the system for themselves. And so when I think
Simon Chan [00:11:55]:
about scaling change, I think if we’re going to support enables people to kind of live out their best midlife, and into retirement, the structures need to catch up. And so the structures being the workplace needs to catch up in terms of
Bernie Borges [00:12:19]:
Learning, I think,
Simon Chan [00:12:20]:
is a real, area that needs to change as well. Oftentimes learning is very much centered in that first kind of 20, 25 years that we traditionally think about. But I think we know that in a changing environment, we need to continue to learn continue to learn on a on an ongoing basis. And so the learning infrastructure, I think that pillar is about where the learning infrastructure is to help people in midlife transition from maybe their primary career to the next act, to what they want to do next. If you think about what role universities and colleges serve 19, 20 years old, like my son who’s in 2nd year university, it is really to serve them to help them transition from kind of adolescence into adulthood. You know, they learn some new things, meet some new people, and test and try to figure out what’s next. Well, longer lives, where’s where are those structures of learning and transition in in midlife? And the last one funding, and I think that’s obvious is that if we’re going
Bernie Borges [00:13:19]:
to live an extended period of
Simon Chan [00:13:20]:
time, we need to be able to fund that extended period of time. And so obviously, there’s savings plans, whether it be workplace or private savings plans, in the US and Canada. But I think without the, the concept of actually stretching out your working career over an extended period of time, I think a lot of people will be challenged to be able to fund, a 90 to a 100 year life.
Bernie Borges [00:13:48]:
Yeah. You kinda read my mind because when you think about, living to to be a 100, I think most people don’t think that way, especially from a funding standpoint. Because, you can certainly outlive your funds if you if you live to to be that that that old. And live to be that old in a healthy and productive way. So my my report my research report, Thriving in Midlife, has a fair amount of content, Simon, that speaks to intergenerational workplace dynamics and mindsets. And so where does that fit into your longevity, work in terms of people of different age groups working together? Whether it’s the workplace, which is a big aspect of of society, the workplace, but even outside the workplace, where does that intergenerational dynamic fit into longevity?
Simon Chan [00:14:41]:
Yeah. So it’s excellent it’s an excellent question because what happens is if you kinda go down, I call it the longevity rabbit hole, you oftentimes enter into you find intergenerational being a theme, a core theme in longevity. And the reason that is is that because people are living longer, oftentimes what we hear about is it’s the aging population, it’s the graying population, etcetera. But actually when you look at the data, what it actually shows is that we’re actually we’re not just getting older, but we’re actually getting more age diverse. And what I mean by that is at the turn of the century, we used to have a lot of younger people and very few old people. So they give it almost as like a triangle of sorts, a pyramid, if you will. Today, because people are living longer and because birth rates have declined from, in Canada at least, about 4, 4 children to about 1.7, I believe this number. But declining birth rates, what you have is this leveling of demographic makeup of a country.
Simon Chan [00:15:39]:
And I know in the US, it’s
Bernie Borges [00:15:39]:
very similar where we have almost the
Simon Chan [00:15:40]:
equal number of people across, age segments. So it’s almost like a square. And so what that ends up resulting in is, as you’ve mentioned, a workforce now that has potentially 5 generations inside of the workforce, where they’re evenly distributed across those different age categories. You’ve got, you know, as many younger people as you do older people, if it’s representative society. And so that’s a construct that really never existed before. And so our systems, our workplace systems aren’t really set up to have that level of diversity. Again, some people will talk about it as a challenge. You know, it’s the battle of the demographics or etcetera.
Simon Chan [00:16:23]:
You know, Okay Boomer, people not looking looking at Gen Z and saying, Oh, they’re soft. But really, I think there’s a real opportunity from a workplace perspective to actually leverage that diversity, that diversity of perspectives, that diversity of thought. There’s there’s very good data that shows that diversity creates better innovative solutions. And I’ve seen that in in, you know, in my experience. I I I used to, you know, primarily work in large corporate organizations, spent about 20 years in financial services at large, insurance and banks. Lots of people who had a lot of really strong institutional knowledge, knowledge of the industry, etcetera, But maybe they weren’t as advanced as it relates to kind of leveraging technology, new ways of working, etcetera. When I left my corporate career, I actually spent some time in the tech sector and worked with a number of startup organizations who are skewed a little bit younger.
Bernie Borges [00:17:14]:
And what I found with them was, well,
Simon Chan [00:17:15]:
they had a lot of innovative ways of thinking about things. Oftentimes, they didn’t actually really understand maybe the industry that they were trying to work in. They didn’t necessarily have the business experience or maybe the leadership experience. So when I think about how you might leverage the value or the exchange of knowledge between older and younger generations, I think there’s a really beautiful bidirectional opportunity for learning, for collaboration, etcetera. So I think longevity really does play into the fact that we’re gonna have generations in the workplace. We need to find ways to work together and bridge the divide. If you look at societal, at places where we used to bring older and younger together, whether it be religious organizations, whether it be clubs, a lot of those have declined. So places like workplace, I also think higher education is a really important place where we need to create more intergenerational opportunities.
Simon Chan [00:18:06]:
I think, again, we gotta find ways to, leverage this, this this level of diversity for the betterment of new customer solutions, betterment of the workforce, etcetera. So I think it’s, again, often looked at as a risk, but it’s a real opportunity, I think, if if, we find ways to intentionally do it well.
Bernie Borges [00:18:25]:
Yeah. I mentioned earlier that, there’s a fair amount of content in my my research report, thriving in midlife. And one data point that I’ll share is forget the exact number. It’s north of 70%. It might be 75% of of those in midlife say that they, enjoy working with people younger than younger generations in the workplace. So that’s in in my research report. And then there was another report that I read a few weeks ago, might have been actually a couple of months ago, that so it’s not mine, but some somewhere else Yep. That says that younger people, and I think it was the millennial crowd, if I remember the data correctly, didn’t feel like they’re well understood by older generations.
Bernie Borges [00:19:08]:
So you’ve got this dichotomy going on. You’ve got people that are older saying we we we like we enjoy working with younger people. We have some younger people saying, we don’t think we’re well understood. And I’m wondering how leaders are dealing with that, and and how they’re how how they’re dealing with that from the standpoint of just developing their work workforce, valuing their workforce, putting programs in place to really optimize their performance, really optimize culture around this whole intergenerational dynamic. What are you seeing around that?
Simon Chan [00:19:42]:
Yeah. I mean, I think your research is bang on. I I do some work with an organization called Cogenerate. It was formerly encore.org, and They’re real leaders in kind of the the the encore space. And again, they evolved into, Cogenerate, which they rebranded a couple of years ago because they saw this focus on intergenerational collaboration. They, have been doing some research with the University of Chicago and that their their findings are exactly the same, Is that the generations actually do wanna find ways to work together, but the gap is they don’t have the opportunity and they don’t have places to work together. And so I think, again, this is where higher ed, where workplaces can play a big role because that is naturally where together to work on things. But I think to your point, what I’ve seen is very little on creating the conditions for older and younger to work together, finding things like what’s the common problem or what’s the common area of passion people’s interests on? How do you find ways to help, older
Bernie Borges [00:20:39]:
and younger appreciate the differences,
Simon Chan [00:20:39]:
but also the similarities that they have? And I think spending some time creating programs to deliberately set the conditions for older and younger to interact, appreciate each other’s strengths and differences, find ways to find commonality and have them actually work on a problem together. I think that’s where there’s an opportunity. Right now, what I see typically in workplaces is that the generational differences are a lot of, like, kind of, like, generational workshops on understanding Gen zed or, you know, working with older adults. Like, I I think it’s a little bit beyond that in that it’s really about building, to your point, team and culture. How would you typically build a team and culture where you’d bring people together, you’d help them find a common mission, you’d help them understand help them understand where each of their roles could be, etcetera. I I mean, I I think you know this. I’m a I’m a very big basketball fan. And so I think about, and I I’ve I’ve had the opportunity to to coach down at Duke a couple of times, and so I’ve been around great coaching like coach k.
Simon Chan [00:21:47]:
And, you know, one of the magical things that he does is he brings people together, helps them understand a common mission. They’re all very talented. How do you help break down some of the barriers, help them understand, what their strengths are, and then combine those strengths in a way where the the sum is greater than the parts. And I it sounds simple, but I think these are the types of programs that we need to think about to put in workplaces, to put in, in learning environments in a higher ed so they can actually practice working together with older and younger generation even before they get into the workforce. I’ve done some work with, the University of Waterloo up here in Canada who’s one of the global leaders in, cooperative education, in work integrated learning. And so we’ve been piloting, how do you bring older and younger people together, help help them kind of bind on a common purpose, help them appreciate each other’s strengths, and then actually tackle a tangible problem. In the case that in the pilot that we worked on, it was a it was a food insecurity project, related to, Waterloo Region. And so, again, these are the kinda early day pilots and experiments that I think are going to emerge as people recognize that we’re working in a multigenerational, in a multigenerational workplace society.
Simon Chan [00:22:59]:
And how do we then leverage the benefit of though of those interactions for, better outcomes and better innovation?
Bernie Borges [00:23:06]:
Simon, what about age discrimination? It’s sort of the elephant in the room. You know, here we are talking about the fact that people are living longer and so society needs to really figure out how to optimize longevity across all of society. And, of course, a big part of that is the is the workplace. And in the workplace, age discrimination is very real. Yep. So how do organizations deal with that in the context of planning for longevity? Yeah.
Simon Chan [00:23:33]:
I mean, ageism, I think we know is is is a real thing. It’s it’s probably one of the last isms that are acceptable, socially acceptable. I think we are all personally guilty of ourselves, right? Yeah. How many times do we say, oh, yeah, I’m too old to do that. Right. Or etcetera. So I think part of this comes down to we need to reframe people are living longer, need to help people reframe how they look at increasing longevity. We have over rotated on just the physical aspects of what it means to get older.
Simon Chan [00:24:02]:
So we look at, you know, physical decline and we say, oh, we’re regressing as it relates to age, etcetera. But there’s a lot of things that actually get better when you get older. You know, people tend to be better at, you know, emotional intelligence, right? They’ve just got the ability to, you know, read people better, oftentimes, intelligence related to connecting the dots is better. You tend to be more comfortable in your own skin as you get older and you have greater perspective. And so leaning into and highlighting some of those benefits, in terms of what does get better as we get older and how do those things serve, you know, potentially serve business outcomes or when they’re combined with other skills back to how do you combine the wisdom of people who are a bit who are older and are able to connect the dots, are able to lead, are able to work across and influence in large or even smaller organizations with the kind of, like, the technical know how and as well as the the ability to look at things differently of maybe younger generations. How do you combine those things together and and and get a better outcome? I think it really businesses and institutions are driven by, you know, results, whether it be financial results, customer results, etcetera. And we need to be able to highlight the benefits of older adults, and what they can bring in conjunction with the existing workforce to better out the to to, you know, improve those outcomes. I think if we can start demonstrating those outcomes, I think hopefully over time, you know, ageism will recede to the background.
Simon Chan [00:25:37]:
The other thing that’s just a practical reality is if we have an aging, you know, we have an aging workforce and they have a lot of knowledge that’s within their experience, etcetera, that’s gonna walk out the door. So there’s a practicality around trying to find ways to engage older adults. And in the US and Canada, I think, you know, it’s pretty clear that we have, you know, labor shortages, right? And, you know, a lot of times we look to different things like immigration, etcetera, and I think those are all great to consider as different workforce strategies. But what about the workforce strategy where you already have people in your organization who understand how it works? But how do we innovate new ways to create a win win so that they can have a flexible, you know, midlife or retirement that actually serves their needs around staying connected to people, having a having purpose and identity, which we often lose when when we retire, and flexibility. But how do we make sure those things also are designed in a way that actually serve the business outcomes of organizations or or institutions?
Bernie Borges [00:26:40]:
We we spent much much of our conversation really focused on business organizations. What about higher ed? You spent a lot of time, not only in higher ed, but you work with higher ed quite a bit. So you’ve got some real, compelling expertise there. So what’s the role of higher ed, in longevity?
Simon Chan [00:26:59]:
Yeah. I think, you know, higher ed is, is served an amazing purpose in educating and creating opportunities for younger adults to explore what’s next. Right? And so I think that there’s an increasingly obvious opportunity for higher ed to also serve that same purpose, but throughout someone’s life and particularly at periods where there are major transitions like midlife and retirement. And so, you know, and I think it also serves a very practical, again, back to the win win, I think there’s
Bernie Borges [00:27:33]:
a there’s an unmet need. I think people want infrastructure and
Simon Chan [00:27:34]:
crave infrastructure to help them transition to what’s next. I think, you know, probably your listeners oftentimes they think about, you know, traveling that journey of midlife and determining how do I move from path A to path B, etcetera. But again, back to it, they’re doing it on their own, that they would benefit very much from some sort of cohort of people at the same stage who are going through the same thing for them to actually learn with, experience with. Again, much like, you know, someone who’s taking an undergraduate program or degree, etcetera. So there’s a there’s a need on the the the individual side. But from a higher ed institutional perspective, because of, you know, declining birth rates, you know, they often talk about the enrollment cliff and that there’s a decline in enrollment for higher ed. Well, why not serve the fastest growing population, part of the population, which is older adults? And so again, how do you create the the higher end of the future where it has an intergenerational component and also serves people not only just early in life, but throughout their lives. And again, at those major inflection points where they really need other people to experience, learn from, and also shift their perspective so they can actually plan and design that next chapter.
Bernie Borges [00:28:48]:
Do you think higher ed will begin to loosen some of their requirements on those that they bring in as faculty? Because it seems to me and this is anecdotal, so you can prove me wrong with with data on this, Simon. But it seems to me that professors and faculty in general are PhDs, so they’re academians as opposed to someone like me or you that’s been in the workforce 30, 40 years with lots of great experience and might want to transition from business into a university faculty role. But I don’t have a PhD, and honestly, I don’t have the the time and the patience to go get one right now just to become a faculty member.
Simon Chan [00:29:27]:
Yeah. I think that the faculty continues to play a very important role even in in these kind of these midlife transition programs. So there’s actual programs that actually have been kicked off at very, prestigious universities to start like Stanford, like Harvard, like Notre Dame. I know that you’ve had the Notre Dame on your previous programs. And these midlife transition programs are, you know, testing and designing this transition, supporting this transition into midlife or from midlife in retirement into the next chapter. And what they’re doing is they’re providing a kind of a combination. They provide, they bring in, you know, maybe 25, 50 people into a cohort who are at the same stage trying to explore what’s next in midlife. And they actually put them through an experience.
Simon Chan [00:30:10]:
In many cases, right now, it’s a year long experience. It’s residential in nature. There are number ones or number of universities are starting new programs that have more, different elements to it. But the the reality is that they go through that experience and they have, you know, in many cases, they have coaches or executive coaches helping them through that experience. But they also have access to faculty members with PhDs who do heavy research or are very knowledgeable about areas in which they’re very interested in. And so in many of these programs, they’ll they’ll bring a faculty member to do a talk on a specific topic. Could be climate change, etcetera. And so still the the the, fellows, which is the tag they use or the the term they use to describe these midlife transitioners, they really value that combination of heavy research, steep subject, matter expertise that that profs who have page PhDs bring.
Simon Chan [00:31:08]:
But they also value some of the other, roles that are brought into these programs like executive coaches, or like, people who have some of that, you know, real world experience. And so they they kinda go through the combination. So I think there’s room for both. And I think that’s where these university midlife transition programs are each gonna kinda figure out what demographic or what market are they trying to serve. Right? Some of the people will not want a residential program. Some people want it to be hybrid or virtual. Some people want will want it to be really focused on, reflection and maybe less on the the the pure academic side of things. And so there’s gonna be various combinations, and models that emerge.
Simon Chan [00:31:48]:
And I think that’s a good thing. I think various models are required to serve this midlife space because as you know from your listeners, not everybody’s different. Everybody has a different view of how they want to navigate their next chapter. And, some of them are gonna want to spend a year at, you know, Stanford living in Palo Alto and and and really accessing the amazing faculty and research that’s there. Some people are going to go to a hybrid program like at the University of Colorado Denver where it’s, you know, it’s a 3 month course, it’s hybrid, and they spend a lot of time on kind of that transitioning phase. And they do bring in expert speakers on midlife and longevity, but it’s a bit of a different feel. So I think, again, there’s room for for different models, in higher ed, and I think that’s actually good. It’ll serve, kind of the various needs that people have as they navigate into this next stage of life.
Bernie Borges [00:32:39]:
Yeah. Well, as you pointed out, I’ve had, the folks from, the ILI program, Inspired Leadership Initiative, Notre Dame. And I know that you and I have already talked about, having you back and discussing or diving deeper into the Nextel Collaborative and this whole encore education topic. It’s a fascinating topic. And and, Simon, this topic, longevity, is a fascinating topic. And I think we’ll wrap it here. But before we wrap it, please tell my listener, how can they get into your world? How can people connect with you and just learn more about what you’ve got going on?
Simon Chan [00:33:11]:
Yeah. So the easiest way to connect with me is on LinkedIn. If you’re interested in some of the work that we do, you can go to our website at, www.adapt with intent.com. And I really welcome, people to embrace the space, learn more, get curious about it because I do think it’s one of those kind of quietly emerging trends that people haven’t spent enough time thinking about and talking about and back kind of full circle to our beginning of our conversation. You know, we talk a lot about things like technology and globalization. I’d venture to say that increasing longevity is gonna be as equally as impactful as some of those other trends. And I think, there’s a real opportunity for us to embrace it and find ways to help people navigate more fulfilling and longer lives.
Bernie Borges [00:33:58]:
I agree. And I’m gonna have to count how many times you used the word fulfilled or fulfilling in this episode. You used it quite a bit, and I thank you for that, Simon. So
Simon Chan [00:34:07]:
Well, I love the I I I love the name of your podcast, and I I think it really is about how do we, support people to to, live a fulfilled, midlife and and all all aspects of life, but, all stages of life, but definitely midlife.
Bernie Borges [00:34:22]:
Exactly. Exactly. Well, thank you, Simon. I really appreciate your time today and your expertise sharing it with us here on the Midlife Fulfill podcast on this maximum episode.
Simon Chan [00:34:31]:
Thanks, Bernie.
