The fruits of ‘second adulthood’
“Old age” used to be associated with a shrinking social world, less 
career ambition, and a quieter, slower life. No more! Today, people in what Suzanne Braun Levine calls “second adulthood” are blazing new trails, innovating new problems to our most difficult social challenges, and creating new relationships.
Just consider The Purpose Prize, a national investment in people over 60 who are combining their passion and experience for social good, administered by Civic Ventures, an organization which Levine serves on the board of. Every year The Prize awards up to $100,000 each to five people in encore careers creating new ways to solve tough social problems. This year’s winner, recently announced, are uplifting the lives of Chinese orphans, helping African immigrants—especially teenagers—adjust to a vastly different life in the United States, and driving the building sector toward dramatically reducing energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions—among so many other amazing ventures.
Levine is no stranger to social change. She was the first editor of Ms. magazine and the only woman editor of the Columbia Journalism Review. In her recent work Levine has defined a new stage of life—Women in Second Adulthood—and she reports on the ongoing changes in women’s lives in her books, on her website, on television and radio, as a frequent guest blogger and lecturer. We are lucky to have her as part of the TEDxWomen lineup. Along with the fabulous Jane Fonda, Levine will paint a purposeful, pleasurable picture of what it means to be an older women in today’s society—turned on, tuned in, and making the world a better place.
