Irene Edwards’ story is both inspirational and relatable. It’s a story that is uniquely hers, but also echoes the zeitgeist of a myriad of midlifers navigating unexpected plot twists in the storylines of their own lives. Part cautionary tale, part clarion call, Irene’s story reinforces the importance of curiosity, long-life learning, reinvention and embracing the impermanence of life.
By age thirteen, after a school career day visit to Vanity Fair, Irene knew exactly what she wanted to do with her life. The single minded pursuit of this goal, to work in magazines as an editor, was like a bright red thread, tightly woven throughout the storyline of her life.
From that point onwards Irene didn’t deviate from this path.
No summer was wasted… work experience, interning, journalism school, and finally a highly coveted job as an editorial assistant working for Condé Nast.
Irene progressed through the ranks quickly and by twenty-two, she was writing for Condé Nast Traveler and globe-trotting to exotic locations like Morocco, Iceland and Bali.
She loved what she did, and her talents did not go unnoticed.
Every time a recruiter called, she listened, accepting opportunities across different publications and locations from the east coast to the west.
Irene’s ambition was fueled by her adventurous spirit and by all measures of success, her career was flourishing. She continued to climb the ranks. She led teams, nurtured talent and eventually, in 2015, aged 41, Irene landed the dream role that she had coveted and been working towards since age 13. Editor in Chief for a Time Inc. magazine.
By the time Irene took the helm, the publishing industry was on life support.
Her role required her to cut staff and continually manage decline, a process that was painful, drawn out and not made easier by the fact that it was entirely foreseeable.
Perhaps the hardest part was the feeling that she was letting down the people who worked for her and who she cared about.
It felt like failure.
When Irene left this role in 2018, she knew she was closing the door, not just on a twenty-year career in publishing, but also on the only thing she had ever aspired to do.
She felt bereft and destabilized. She had officially vacated her old life, but not yet moved into her new one. She was betwixt and between. No longer who she was, but yet to become who she might be.
The period of mourning that followed was a tough time for her.
Her identity which had come to be defined by the career she had spent a lifetime working towards, had been unceremoniously cut loose from the mooring to which it had been securely tethered.
She was adrift, in search of a new mooring but with no idea where to start looking.
It was during this period of soul searching, sign searching and deep personal excavation that serendipity came knocking in the form of MEA’s Chip Conley.
Irene knew Chip from her time working in luxury travel magazines. Over dinner, he told her about a new project he was working on called The Modern Elder Academy.
The idea of a mid-life pit stop offering her the space to consciously curate the second half of your life, instantly resonated with Irene and she immediately enrolled to attend one of the first MEA residential courses in December of 2018.
Closing the door on my twenty-year career left me feeling bereft and destabilized."
But perhaps her biggest ‘Baja AHA’ came in the form of a framework that overlayed some logic and predictability around the reliable cadence of transitions and allowed her to reframe the ‘life quake’ and transition that she was navigating… not as a cause for despair, but as a catalyst for reinvention.
This liminal space between the two sets of life’s ‘tracks’ that Irene found herself on was littered with paradox and uncertainty.
A part of her was still pining for the familiarity and security of the identity that had defined her for the past two decades, but another part of her also felt a twinge of anticipatory curiosity around the infinite possibilities of all the ‘unknowns’ that lay ahead.
A few months later, one of those ‘unknowns’ came knocking.
Irene was offered an opportunity to work in a corporate communications role for a company based in in Copenhagen, Denmark.
That spirit of adventure, buried below all the layers of life was reignited and she and her family sold up and set off. Copenhagen both ‘filled a space’ and ‘was a space’ – a liminal cocoon where she was free to experiment and reinvent, far removed from the identity that had defined her for so long.
For four years Irene lived and worked in her ‘Danish cocoon,’ without a clear picture of where it would lead, but resolute in the knowledge that she couldn’t go back to what or who she once was.
She was resigned to the notion that she might never find another career that she loved as much as publishing. But little did she know that her own ‘imaginal cells’ were hard at work reimagining a new shape for her to step into.
Like most butterflies, Irene did not see her next role coming and nor could she have predicted how it would both challenge and fulfill her in ways she didn’t think possible.
As the Content and Communications executive for a venture capital firm that focusses on investments in scientific fields like space and robotics, Irene has uncovered a second ‘encore’ career, which to her surprise, she is growing to love as much as her ‘first’ career.
She has acquainted herself with the foreign but exhilarating feeling of being out of her depth and is thriving on the challenge. She has found a renewed sense of purpose around supporting a company whose mission is to innovate for the betterment of humanity.
That week in Baja was transformative. I shared, listened, laughed and cried until I felt like a sponge wrung out to dry."
This is absolutely true for Irene, who has rejected the internal narrative, that as a ‘creative’ person, she wasn’t good at math or science.
She has reclaimed an aspect of her identity that she’d let go of, reigniting her innate curiosity and is actively educating herself, enrolling in an online course in financial math and data visualization.
Irene is living testament to the fact that you can alter the plot of your life story whenever you want.
She refused to believe that the best was behind her and is rewriting a new script for a bespoke second act that is tailor made for her. In marrying wisdom and experience with curiosity, a beginner’s mind and a willingness to evolve, Irene is embracing all the hallmarks of what it means to be a modern elder.
“To know exactly where you’re headed may be the best way to go astray. Not all who loiter are lost.”
– Sue Monk Kidd
- Ang Galloway, midlife writer and MEA alumni