Penny Mudd

A story on MSNBC about three individuals in their encore careers brought the biggest spike in Encore.org’s history – more than 3,400 visits in a single day.

The article posted on January 25, “Workers Finding Fulfillment in Encore Careers,” tells the stories of Terry Ramey, 42, a former autoworker in Michigan who is currently in nursing school; Penny Mudd, 55, a 20-year Silicon Valley veteran who is studying to become a middle school math teacher; and Barbara Higbee, 57, a district manager for a Texas merchandising school who now works for a women’s crisis center.

Ramey told MSNBC writer Eve Tahmincioglu, “I feel like I’m going to make a difference.” Higbee said, “When I look at the personal rewards I get, that’s more important to me than money.”

The reference to Encore.org is one of several suggestions made by Marci Alboher, a senior fellow at Civic Ventures, for encore career seekers.

Lee Igel, assistant professor in the Schools of Continuing & Professional Studies at New York University, says workers in their 40s and 50s are at a point where they’re starting to crave a more meaningful career. “They are turned off by the business world that didn’t do for them what it was supposed to do, and at the same time their careers didn’t really fulfill them anyway.”

Tahmincioglu cites the 2008 MetLife Foundation/Civic Ventures survey that found that between 5.3 million and 8.4 million Americans have already started their encore careers and that half of those between the ages of 44 and 70 not in encore careers would like them.