Left to right: Stephanie Kaplan, age 22, Co-founder and CEO of online magazine hercampus.com. Martin Levin, age 92, Attorney at Cowan Liebowitz & Latman. Diane Broadnax, age 51 Mother of Jasmine, age 13, and Anika, age 5.
The path to the American Dream is well trod: Jane and Dick graduate from high school and college. They get married, buy a little house, and (cue the montage music) welcome one, then two cherubs. Jane probably stays home while hubby works his way up the ladder for several decades. And finally, they retire to some serene place, playing golf and canasta into their twilight years.
Nowadays we're scrambling the prescribed, linear routes. Starting a family young feels strangely old-fashioned. The median age for a first marriage has been climbing for decades and is currently about 28 for men and 26 for women; tack on up to four more years in areas such as D.C. or New York State. In 2008, more women over age 35 gave birth than did teenage women—a complete switcheroo from just 1990, when teen moms outnumbered older ones. In the career world, toiling away for years for an executive suite sounds passé; that story has been replaced by the whiz kid who calls himself boss from day one and perhaps millionaire in just a few years. And when it comes to later life, more people are working productively, not lolling about some Sun City retirement community.
Here PT explores three groups that are skewing the sociology of the past century: young tech entrepreneurs, middle-age parents of newborns, and folks who embark on professions in their twilight years. Adaptive as they are to new realities, none are without new challenges, either.
Baby-faced Tech Lords and Ladies
Epitomized by poster boy Mark Zuckerberg and mythologized in movies such as The Social Network, the young start-up king is thought of as a modern-day Horatio Alger who makes his way through sheer genius—not grit—and certainly without the involvement of old fogies. After all, youth is a strategic advantage in the technology arena because the entrepreneurs are often closer in age and behavior to potential customers. In reality, however, the standard Silicon Valley business model has long paired young visionaries with industry veterans, says Bob Sutton,
Stanford University professor and bestselling author of The No Asshole Rule. Think of older counselors such as Eric Schmidt at Google, Mike Markkula at Apple, and Sheryl Sandberg at Facebook.
It's a symbiotic relationship, with the young folks bringing the "juice"—boundless energy, innovative ideas, and baggage-free personal lives. One key benefit of youth is a large thirst for risk-taking. Says Sutton, "As people get older, they tend to become less entrepreneurial as real life responsibilities get in the way." Spouse. Mortgage. Car payment. Kids. College tuition. Contrast a person preoccupied with those obligations with someone like Josh Weinstein, 24, CEO of the social networking site youaretv.com, who doesn't take a salary and lives with his mom. "I don't spend a lot of money. It helps that I don't even drink alcohol," he says.
The older folks—investors, senior management, or a board of advisers—bring the experience, money, access to an elite network, and mentoring. "Success and leadership are not the same thing," says Ron Riggio, director of the Kravitz Leadership Institute at Claremont McKenna College. "You can be successful in spite of your management skills if you simply have the right idea at the right time."
Riggio, who studies the role of charisma and emotional intelligence in business, says one of the keys to leadership is a command of "soft" skills: knowing what makes people tick, having empathy, and being able to motivate underlings. Good leadership also requires emotional maturity, an ability to regulate your emotions in the workplace while (somewhat paradoxically) allowing emotions—rather than logic alone—to guide your decisions. Emotional maturity does not necessarily come with age; over time, power can corrupt, as evidenced by middle-age bosses who behave like babies. But sometimes the stereotype rings true. Says Sutton, "Many of the [young tech lords] have a narrow focus on believing they're smarter than anyone else. To offset that, they sometimes need adult supervision."
Girl Power: Stephanie Kaplan in the Boston offices of Her Campus Media, a lifestyle website for college women.
For a young leader in the marketplace, half the battle is combating a perception of complete inexperience, something Stephanie Kaplan, the 22-year-old cofounder and CEO of the online magazine hercampus.com, knows firsthand. She often meets and negotiates with media executives who have paid their dues. Before she and her two cofounders (also in their early 20s) go into a meeting, they do their research and prepare a clear agenda for the conversation. "We don't want there to be an awkward silence where they’re thinking, ‘Why are these silly girls wasting our time?’ ” Kaplan says.
On occasion, her zealousness meets with contempt. She remembers a time she was negotiating a contract with a seasoned publishing executive. Kaplan was firm about keeping in a particular term of agreement. The exec snapped that Kaplan didn't know "how this industry works," that she was being "inappropriate." Says Kaplan, "Somehow, I don't think she would have said that if I were her age." Situations like that are all the more reason why young CEOs must "look" like leaders, says Riggio. "It's image management: being tactful. Saying the right things. Looking like you're in charge. Exuding self-confidence and self-efficacy and having an optimistic, can-do attitude."
