When your encore career makes lasting change.
When you meet Linda Brashear, you might not guess that she’s retired, even though she’s dressed in workout clothes on the day we meet for lunch.
Actually, she says she’s partially retired. Then she launches into the phone conversation she was just having with a mutual professional friend and begins to recount her long and varied career, and we are off to the races.
If this is retirement, bring it on.
Like many women of her generation, she makes it sound like she just sort of fell into her first career, working in the early days of cable television in Memphis. That’s where I first met her, when she was the Vice President of Marketing and Public Affairs for Time Warner, and I edited the sections of The Commercial Appeal that included television reporting from Tom Walter, the late and much beloved (by both Linda and me) TV and media reporter.
(Yes, kids, back in the 1990s the newspaper had a reporter who just covered television, from which shows were coming up to news controversies to how TV came to be delivered to that box in the living room. We even sent him every year to Los Angeles to write about the upcoming TV season. Amazing, no?)
Anyway, Linda thrived for nearly two decades in the growing and changing world of cable television, learning how to negotiate franchises and land rights, learning — and relearning — rules and laws, working with and for various leaders and colleagues, in Memphis and across the country. Learning, learning, learning.
Eventually, though, the business changed enough that she knew it was time to leave, so she retired.
And wondered what she should do next.
Linda knew she wanted to find the next chapter — she calls it her encore career. Indeed, AARP reports that something like 20 percent of retirees are working either full- or part-time, and a recent T. Rowe Price article names the social and emotional benefits of going back to work after retiring, as well as the financial ones.
In any case, she ended up interviewing for a position at the Shelby Farms Park Conservancy, where hoped the skills she’d developed earlier in her career might translate into nonprofit work. As Director of Strategic Business Operations, she loved the idea of being able to make a difference and improve Memphis.
At Shelby Farms, Linda found herself working with Jen Andrews, who’d started at the conservancy just out of Rhodes College. Though Jen was at the beginning of her career and Linda wasn’t, it was a great fit, for both of them and for the larger organization. What happened next makes it clear why an encore career can be as fulfilling as the original one.
“Linda came to the Shelby Farms Park Conservancy at a critical time, and put her considerable corporate skills to great use,” said Andrews. When Jen became CEO of the conservancy in 2016, she made Linda the Chief Operating Officer.
“She is deeply curious and loves to learn about absolutely anything,” Andrews said. “She’s impossibly kind and wickedly funny, but I think what’s most special about Linda is the way she uses her curiosity to learn and deepen her understanding, and then shares that knowledge and experience so openly and generously to help others. People she hasn't worked with for 20 years still call her for advice.
“Linda has been a role model and mentor for me, and she’s influenced my leadership style more than anyone else I’ve worked with.”
Even though Linda has stepped back from the Shelby Farms Park Conservancy day-to-day, I still spot her at events, staying late to chat with all kinds — and ages — of people. And though she travels more these days, she’s still making connections: A few days after our conversation, she asked if she could set up lunch for us with someone she wants me to meet.
Absolutely, and always.
If this is retirement, bring it on.
Amen!