(logo swooshes) (bright music) (Upbeat Music) - Hello, I'm Kathleen Bade.

Welcome to this episode of "Working Forward" where we're shedding light on real-world workforce obstacles and opportunities to spark awareness and potential solutions.

At a Phoenix employment office, nearly one in five discrimination complaints are related to age.

Many older workers hear things like, "You're overqualified," code that often means, "You're too old."

In Arizona where the population age 65 and up is rapidly growing, these stories are becoming more common.

But here's the truth, many older workers in Arizona can't afford to retire, and many are choosing to shift careers, upskill, or return to the workforce.

Whether out of necessity or passion, their experience is a vital and valuable part of the labor force, but far too often, overlooked.

In "The Working Nation" film, we're featuring the short documentary, "Finish Line," getting a glimpse of the struggle and triumph of an advertising executive who faces systemic ageism and works to remain relevant in a changing industry.

Through the lens of this documentary, we wanna have a conversation about ageism and remaining meaningfully in the workplace.

But first, let's get into the film.

(people chattering) - Old is a state of mind, right?

Stay young forever young.

(skateboard wheels whirring) (car horn honks) - [Narrator] What percentage of humans age?

I think we all know the answer to that one.

Everybody.

(rhythmic music) - [Participant] I feel like late fifties, honestly.

- I feel like once I hit the 60 mark, it'll feel like, okay, like I'm getting older.

- [Interviewer] What's old for you?

Is 40 old?

- Oh yeah.

Forties old.

(laughing) - This is what I'll look like when I'm 57.

- My age, I am 56-years-old.

This is where I'm headed.

It's kind of like, okay, I'll just kind of sneak by.

As long as my work is good, then it's not gonna be an issue.

But I've seen some friends who, same age or a little younger, that it can be something that they have to navigate around.

(rhythmic music) On my website, of my work, and maybe on LinkedIn, I took off the first two or three agencies because if anyone's doing the math, it's gonna put me a certain age.

- An estimated 10 million above the age of 65 are still working.

That is a number that has more than doubled since 1985.

- I'm about the oldest person at the agency by 10 years, but I look like I fit in.

No one's gonna go like young, young, young, young, super old, young, young, young, young.

So I'm on shoot and I'm probably the oldest person on the set by 15 years, including the client.

And I had a birthday during production.

I didn't tell anyone it was my birthday, not because I didn't want to disrupt the, you know, the flow of the production 'cause I didn't want to answer any questions.

Like, "Oh, that's awesome.

How old are you?"

- I tell people how old I am, as often as is humanly possible.

I pronounce my age from the rooftops.

I was born in 1960 and I'm 62-years-old now.

- When I started working, I just wanted to be an adult.

I wanted to work.

And when you start working, you're just running.

You're not thinking about your 401k, you're not thinking about like what's gonna happen like in my forties and fifties when I'm like in the senior side.

When I was 35, I just figured I'm gonna work till I'm 65!

You start to see the finish line.

And also at the finish line, there's no onE 65 (chuckles).

There's no people crossing the finish line in an advertising race at 60.

(pensive music) - Like, I hope I'm doig something I'm passionate enough about that I would want to keep working.

You know?

- [Participant] I wanna retire when I'm 45.

- 45?

(laughing) - Yeah.

- That feels ambitious.

- I encourage everyone to call out those little daily incidents that just embed ageism more.

Every time somebody says, "Ooh, you don't look your age," that's ageist.

Never say, oh no, I'm dating myself because that is reinforcing ageism.

Say your age loud and proud, and make a virtue out of your extraordinary experience to date.

- Oh my Lord.

I've dated myself by saying that I stood in line for the original Star Wars when it came out.

I'm very mindful of the references, cultural, musical.

(pensive music) Yeah, I remember when Duran Duran came out and I was driving down the street.

They're like, "You were driving when Duran Duran came out?"

Like, that's crazy.

My dad was a doctor and he had a career and he was valued actually as a doctor in his later years.

And when he retired, he was still working at other hospitals.

A career like medicine, you're actually valued as you get older.

- The thing that businesses are spectacularly failing to see is how enormously time and cost efficient hiring and promoting older people is.

You can revolutionize your bottom line when you hire, promote, value, champion and celebrate older people because it doesn't matter what business problem you show us, we've seen it before, we know how to address it.

Businesses make themselves so much more time and cost efficient when they hire and value older talent.

(people chattering) - This was my daughter's place and she got sick and died in 2012, but I couldn't let it go, so I took it over full-time.

So I'm just doing what she taught us.

(chuckles) I was a lawyer up until the pandemic.

I was doing both.

And then when the pandemic hit, I decided to give up the law and started working full-time here.

I'm 81-years-old.

Patio one.

To be considered an older worker, you have to be a hundred.

So I'm still working on it.

- Thank you for joining us for this episode of "Working Forward" and the presentation of the short film, "Finish Line."

We just saw how Mark continues to strive to produce great work, but hides his age from his younger coworkers while Carol went from a lawyer to a restaurateur.

So what does it mean to cross the finish line?

Joining me to answer this question is Dr. Amit Shah, who practices geriatric medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Arizona, Jonathan Higuera, a former journalist turn math teacher, and the film's director, Alice Gu.

Welcome.

Well, naturally, let's start with you the director, Alice.

What does the finish line mean to you?

- The finish line to me is something that Mark had mentioned during his interview that when you start your career in your early twenties, I think the finish line is something that is so far off for most working Americans.

You think 65 is the age of retirement, and that's when you put in all the years of hard work and you get to relax and coast the rest of the Golden Years.

But as we are seeing and as was aforementioned, that that finish line, it just keeps moving now, that's 65, 70, 75 people are working well into their Golden Years now.

I wanna bring awareness to the finish line that when we're starting our careers in our early twenties, that the finish line is something that we wanna be planning for, we wanna be thinking about.

- Yeah, and they keep moving the goalposts, as you mentioned.

So do you think it's fair to say in the course of filming the "Finish Line" that you found that ageism, and though it may not be as overt as it once was in the workplace, is still very much present?

- Ageism is very much still present, I would say in certain industries.

As Mark also mentions in the film that his father, when he retired as a doctor, I would say medicine is a profession where the older you get, you get more respect.

You're revered for all of your years of experience.

But where in Mark's career in advertising, certainly, that is a very young industry.

I'd say entertainment is a very young industry and we are facing ageism all the time.

- And this is your field of expertise, Dr. Shah.

So I wanna ask you, you once mentioned that ageism is the only ism that is still socially acceptable.

Why is that and why is it so embedded in our daily lives?

- Yeah, that is kind of an interesting thing.

It's the ism that we may all experience, you know, 80 to 90, and in some countries 90% of people will live to past the age of 65.

And so we will all kind of experience what it's like to be an older person, to experience how people may discount our abilities.

And you know, internally, we still feel like the same person.

We don't, you know, my older patients don't think of themselves as 90-year-old people, they always tell me that inside I'm still the same person, the same 20-year-old, you know, with some wisdom and some life experiences of course.

But you know, but we live in a very ageist society and unfortunately these messages that older people are not worthy, that they don't have anything to contribute, some of us internalize some of it.

So ageism is something that's not only external, it can also be internally upon ourselves and really affect the quality of our lives.

- Yeah, and you have to have confidence to sort of pivot in life.

And that's where we bring you in Jonathan Higuera.

Because at the age of 61, after decades of spending in one capacity or another, your life as a journalist, you became a math teacher.

Tell us how you made that leap.

- Well, I'm not gonna say it was an accident because I intentionally intended to go into teaching, but I thought I would be teaching something more related to my field of journalism, of communications.

But the opening that came up was in math, it was teaching fifth grade math.

And the principal said, "Well, you can do it, you know, and we're gonna help you and support you," so I went for it.

And so I spent the past nine months teaching fifth graders math and boning up my personal fifth grade math skills along the way.

- Now when you embarked on this, did your age and any potential limitations that come with it enter your mind?

- Well, what I was thinking as I did it was I was entering another phase of my professional life.

I felt like I had the various phases where you feel like you've done a lot that you wanted to do, but maybe not completely reached the pinnacle of where you wanted to be, but you were still willing to get out there and wanting to work.

And I just thought, I wanna try a pivot.

I had a friend who was teaching who had made a similar pivot.

So I started with substitute teaching and thought, "You know, this is okay, but I think I'd like to have my own classroom."

It seemed to be easier to get the respect and authority you need to lead a classroom of fifth graders, so.

- And how were you received by your coworkers and also the students?

- Well, I would say it was a work in progress and it's still a work in progress.

I always respected teachers, particularly those who teach in the public education system now more than ever.

I see how difficult it is.

And I was received well by my coworkers to answer your question.

And with the students, I'm still learning how to control a classroom in a way that they're learning and they're motivated to learn.

- Did your age ever come up?

- It came up.

Yes.

It has come up a few times.

The kids always ask how old you are?

And I would tell 'em, "Well look up when John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and I'm within a year or two of that," so I didn't wanna give it away completely.

But some of them quickly figured it out.

And yeah, the age did come up.

But, you know, teaching math, it was about how well I explained the concept and whether I could motivate some of them to truly enjoy it.

I was in a lower socioeconomic district school, and so there were a lot of things we had to work through to get 'em to a point where they were learning.

- Speaking of youth, Dr. Shah, it kind of brings up a point you also make through your work, is that age discrimination is a seed that's planted early.

- I think you see it very early.

You see it from media, you see it from social media, you see it from filters people put on to make themselves look younger, right.

Or jokes that they'll make about older people.

And so, you know, this cultural sort of ageism, I think we all imbibe it a lot and we see it in our advertising in the way that we treat our athletes.

You know, and the way that you, even you use the word geriatric, you know, my patients say, "Well, I like you as a doctor, but can I not tell people I see a geriatrician?"

because they don't like that that's their doctor now.

You know, so even that term, geriatric or older or elderly, you know, we haven't found an acceptable, socially acceptable term for people who are older.

Isn't that strange?

(laughing) - Yeah, that is in this day and age, and Alice, you really kind of highlighted this anti-aging culture that we live in the film because you interviewed a variety of people and you really do see kind of headwinds that we face.

And it showed, and correct me if I'm wrong, that how individuals face age themselves really makes a difference.

- Very much so.

The attitude that you have, I mean, Cindy Gallup is a force, so she's not gonna let ageism stop her at all.

I mean, I do feel like there are factors though, even if you are, your personal attitudes towards, I'm not gonna let this stop me at all, there are external factors that are beyond your control.

And if it's okay, I wanted to piggyback on something that Dr. Shah said about our culture of ageism.

I think this is also something that was interesting in my research for the documentary.

For example, you take Japan, and Japan is a culture that reveres and respects its elders.

So they make a point in all of their restaurants, they have hooks for canes, you know, they think of their elderly in their society.

And I don't know if that means that ageism is less prevalent there, but certainly being older is something that is respected there.

- Yeah and here- - I think is the opposite here.

- Yeah, in this country, often people who are getting older say that they feel like they're not seen at all, that they feel like they're, you know, invisible.

- Yes, so I think if we can have the conversation, if this film helps to open up that dialogue, you know, maybe we can start to realize the flaws in our society.

Maybe we can start to put the canes in restaurants, you know, hooks for canes and start implementing some policy.

You know, and you have a cultural policies or things that start to account for our elderly population.

- Dr. Shah, there's a lot of myths when it comes to ageism, including that older people can't be taught or use technology.

So can you dispel some of the common myths that are out there?

- Yeah, there's tons of these myths out there.

And in my medical school, we assign all of our students to a senior sage, someone who's in the community who they have a four year long relationship with, and they write reflection essays, they tell me about their experiences and the number one thing that their students do, they're just surprised by how active their senior mentor is, that they have a great exercise routine, that they text them, that they're on social media.

I mean, it's funny to hear from these 20-something-year-old, most of our medical students too, of what their experiences of these folks who are in their eighties.

And I think the key is to really continue to be generative as you age, you know, and I think that a lot of older people continue to do that.

There's a lot of myths like that all older people have dementia.

You know, that's not true.

There are lots of 90 and hundred-year-old patients who are cognitively sharp that have no dementia, but yet people treat them as if they do.

There are myths around technology and use of technology.

There's myths around exercise routine.

There's myths around whether people continue to want to have relationships or to be sexually active even for that matter.

You know, like there's a lot of these agist myths that we have.

But you know, but why not?

I mean, in the end, people who are 90 are still the same human being that they were when they were 20.

They have wisdom, they have experience, they have some of that, but they're still intrinsically the same person, right?

- Yeah and they have good stories to tell.

- And they have great stories to tell.

And we need to create structure in our communities where we have older people and younger people interacting with each other.

I recently visited one of our places here in Phoenix that has a adult day center where there's also a kids' care center.

And so there's a daycare and an adult daycare.

And those children and the older adults, they interact with each other during those set times of the day.

What a wonderful thing to be like, "Oh, older people are neat, they're interesting, they have something to offer me," you know?

And I think we need to do more of that in our communities and our societies 'cause as we get more isolated, we forget that the intergenerational sort of like, there's value in older people.

- And I love that about the newsrooms that the younger writers that would come in would keep us who were in the older generations younger and vice versa.

We were sharing our wisdom.

And you have a friend, Alice, that was surprised that she got to be a social media manager at her age.

- That's right.

She's 59-years-old, is a social media manager for a young, hip fashion company.

And my friends own the company and their friends were asking them, they're like, "You have a 59-year-old as your social media manager.

Why isn't, you know, a 24-year-old, somebody who's younger, hipper, knows all the lingo, et cetera?"

And they said she was the best qualified for the job.

And just because she's 59 doesn't mean that she doesn't know what's going on.

Obviously, if we're hiring her and she's going for the position, she's absolutely qualified.

- And I know what that feels like.

I'm 57-years-old and I recently saw when I was in the news business for 31 years anchoring, and I saw an email that said, "What happened to Kathleen Bade?

She looks older."

And I thought, "Well, yeah, I've been doing this for three decades and I've raised two kids."

Am I supposed to stay the same?

I mean, Jonathan, none of us stay the same.

You took a pivot yourself, but that takes courage.

And I recently did that, changing jobs at my age.

So tell me, where did you get the confidence to do it?

- Well, it feels like a natural progression in that I was ready to move on from what I had been doing.

But I quickly realized also that when you make that pivot and make that transition, sometimes we think that we're gonna step into it and be pretty good at it based on our years of experience.

But I would say we need to also think about what are the skills we need to further develop to make that pivot.

And are you investing in yourself as you go along in your career so that you're ready to assume the social media responsibilities that you'll have?

Even as teachers, we're constantly texting each other and keeping each other updated.

And so, I mean, I think you need to think about these things as you make that transition, like what else do I need to add to my toolkit so that I can step into that role and be that hip 60-year-old that can get it done and isn't gonna be- - But you also learned other things along the way.

Like you still have a lot to contribute.

Tell us about some of the lessons.

- Well, I did learn that, some of the lessons that I taught the students or some of the lessons I learned from me?

- That you learned through this process because you told me that you still have, you realize that you don't wanna retire, that you still have a lot to offer in this life.

- Correct.

I was contemplating maybe a semi-retirement and slowing it down as I headed towards 65.

But as soon as I got back into this workplace like this, I decided, "You know what, I still have a lot to offer the world and it's not time to slow down."

It is time to think about what you're gonna do that feeds your soul and that you can feel good about moving forward so you don't feel like you're not contributing to society or whatever it is that makes you feel good about your workplace.

And so that's what this experience did for me.

It gave me that charge to realize that, yes, I can do this.

Two, it's a valuable tool that you're sharing with society, something valuable to give.

And three, I need to think about how I can be better at this.

Teaching, I didn't step into the classroom and I was good at it.

I can see it's a three to five year investment to really become what I want to become in a classroom if I continue that route, so.

- Yeah, you have to be willing to live with the discomfort and be a newbie again, which brings us to the million dollar question, Dr. Shah.

How do we as we age, maintain our vitality and thrive as we age?

- I think you have to, it's a chronic battle in stagnation, right?

I mean, for us at all ages, right?

I mean, to be invested, to love what we do every day, as one of my patients put it, a reason to get up in the morning.

- Yes.

- You know, and I think when the door closes as it will, you know, sometimes our knees might hurt or we can't be as quick or as fast as we were when we were younger, to cry over that loss or do we pivot and do we end up actually trying out something new, finding something that gives us just as much meaning or trying something completely different.

Some of my patients will do a little bit of I'm gonna reduce my time.

A lot of people find a lot of meaning in mentorship, in giving back to the next generation.

Great workplaces are one that create that opportunity for older people to move aside a little bit, but also still be present and to be in a mentoring role.

And so I think each person's very different.

Some people love to stay in the same profession they were in.

Other people, like we saw in the documentary, will switch over to something completely different, you know, like running a diner.

But I think that something to get up in the morning, a reason to get up in the morning and to learn new skills.

We know from a brain perspective, from a cognitive perspective, if we can learn new things, we build new neurons.

And that doesn't stop when we're 20 or 30 or 40.

We can still build new connections.

We can learn new things forever until our last days.

And I think the patients that I've seen is most inspiring to me, who I'd like to be like, are the ones who find something new who pivot, who don't stare at the shut door and move to something different.

And that's in all domains.

You know, I have 80 and 90-year-olds who have gotten remarried, you know, have found love again in the nursing home.

I have patients who have just done remarkable things, have written books, have given back to their communities, have used that opportunity when they're not worried about a paycheck, maybe they're financially secure to volunteer, to give back to the next generation.

And I think the more that we have that we increase that intergenerational opportunities.

- Yeah, be lifetime learners and continue to be the author of your own story and keep writing for goodness sakes.

- That's right.

Yeah, yeah.

- You say in this time, it's actually an interesting time for, you know, an aging population given social media, TikTok, I mean, learning something new, you can create, you can be an influencer.

- Yeah, yeah.

- You can be an influencer at 60, 70-years-old.

- Yeah.

- You can create a brand for yourself.

This something that's new for us that didn't necessarily exist before.

- Yeah, I mean, I think your scope and the feedback you get that other people are like me that are in the same boat as me, that I have something to give.

I mean, there are lots of people on TikTok now that are in their seventies and eighties, right?

I mean, you hear about it.

There's sometimes an ageism underlying it.

Like, this person's cool because they're 90 and doing this, right?

So we have to be careful a little bit.

But I think that we can move away from that pretty quickly and see that person's value for what they're giving us, rather than, "Oh, isn't that cool?

A 90-year-old skiing," you know, and you're seeing a video of them skiing.

Well, that's great and I like it and it's inspiring, right?

But implicit in that is a bit of ageism, so we have to be careful a little bit.

- So right.

- And there it is, that it's not all downhill.

I like that.

(all laughing) Literally.

Well, we wanna thank our guests, Dr. Amit Shah, Jonathan Higuera, and Alice Gu for a stimulating conversation about ageism, navigating a different path and what it means to get to the finish line.

We're striving to have impactful conversations on local topics that matter to you.

I'm Kathleen Bade.

Thank you for watching this episode of "Working Forward."

(Upbeat Music) (Upbeat Music)