Turning 50 – reflecting on five decades part 3

I hope that you’ve enjoyed the last few posts that have reflected the decades of my life from a personal, professional, and historical perspective. This post will wrap up the overview of the last five decades of my life.  

2016-2025

Turning 40 was a pivotal point in my life from multiple perspectives. Desiigner’s “Panda” was the number one song on the radio (or satellite, or however else you listen to music). I would experience great joy with the birth of my son (it’s hard to believe that he will be nine in less than a month!) and great sorrow with the unexpected death of my husband. In this decade, we learned the words Brexit, SpaceX, and COVID-19.  Zoom meetings became the norm during quarantine, and we never expected to be stressed about having enough toilet paper at home. We also saw the emergence of A.I. which had been around for many years but now accelerated into the mainstream.

Leadership development introduced us to James Clear’s Atomic Habits that encouraged continuous improvement (yes, I highlighted this book in a past post), Bill Burnett and Dave Evans’ Designing Your Life challenging us to consider career maps and doing work with a purpose, and Kim Scott’s Radical Candor that helps leaders find the balance between giving direct feedback and having personal care for team members. Leaders during that time included U.S. Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden, Vladmir Putin in his second time leading Russia, France’s President Emmanuel Marcon, and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

This most recent decade saw the strongest growth in my professional life. I earned my Master of Training and Development at Oakland University in December 2016, right at the end of my first trimester with my son. Not too long after his birth, I moved into a new role at work where I was an instructional designer and facilitator for sales support staff, starting to develop my instructional design skills. Almost two years later, I accepted a promotion to my current role leading a team that designs training for providers and staff that do business with our company. This experience has grown and stretched me as a leader, learning to build a team and develop relationships with co-workers and key stakeholders that foster collaboration and support for each of our training deliverables. It also taught me about leading teams in a virtual and hybrid environment, which was a factor in my interest to research organizational support for remote workers (You can learn more about that journey in a previous post).

If you remember my last post, I joined our company’s chapter of the National Management Association in the previous decade of my life. In this decade, I moved into roles that included an officer that oversaw the planning and hosting of our monthly meetings and two years as our chapter’s Board of Directors chairperson. Through the experience, I discovered an opportunity to become a National Director with NMA. This is a role that serves as a liaison between the national organization and the chapter you are assigned to. In 2023, I was sworn in as the National Director for my local chapter. Through my experience and involvement on board committees, I was nominated to become an officer on the board. In the fall of 2024, I was voted as the National Secretary and am now serving as the National Treasurer. It’s an honor to serve in these roles, and I look forward to future opportunities within the NMA board.  

2026

So here I am, starting the next decade of my life. It’s been about a month since I turned 50. The history is being laid out before me, and now I start to anticipate what the future holds. What will my career look like over the next 10 years? How will I grow as a leader? What knowledge will I have gained? How will my son grow up?

I don’t have these answers yet, and that’s completely ok. I look forward to this next path on my life journey and hope to have some amazing stories to share with you down the road as I continue this blog. Thank you for taking the time to learn about these five decades.

What were you most amazed about? How did it help you reflect on the decades of you life? I’d love to see your comments! PS – The number one song on my 50^th Birthday was Olivia Rodrigo’s “Drop Dead.”