A thoughtful exploration of navigating job loss and career transitions near retirement, examining practical strategies like lateral moves, fractional work, and advisory roles over risky pivots for older women facing financial constraints and age discrimination.
Her Story
About Michiko
Michiko Katsuren founded her executive career transition business following a pivotal conversation with her sister, who had spent her entire career at a Fortune 100 company facing increasing toxicity while serving as the primary breadwinner for her family. Having herself been recently displaced from her corporate role as a single mother with school-aged children and approximately ten years from retirement, Michiko recognized the combined pressures of ageism and advancing AI on professionals in her generation. Together, they established the business to assist others who are still employed or recently displaced by providing tools and services to make accomplishments more visible, expand networks, and reduce vulnerability to reorgs or job loss. Michiko views AI as an opportunity to be leveraged rather than a threat and encourages Gen X professionals to seek support instead of "job-hugging" in hopes of reaching retirement unnoticed. Her approach stems directly from her background in business administration and a desire to help as many people as possible achieve greater stability without repeated cycles of employment and displacement.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Michiko
01What do you attribute your success to?
I am dedicated to my children and strive to be the best role model I can be. I've been fortunate to have the luxury of building this business and showing my daughters that you're never too old to reinvent yourself especially when your goal is to help others. They inspire me every day to be curious and energetic and never forget what is most important in life. I love what I'm doing now, for the first time in my adult life, and they're the reason why.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
Ironically, the best career advice I ever received was the advice I never received. It was watching my father give up on his entrepreneurial dreams. He is a brilliant man, dedicated to his family and his profession but he was (and still is) a perfectionist, to a fault. His standards were always so unrealistically high that nothing was ever good enough so everything he developed stayed on the drawing board. I share his dedication to providing the best possible products and services, but I also understand that perfection is relative. What may be perfect for you, may not be perfect for me. So, instead of focusing on perfection, I focus on progress, working towards being better at whatever I'm focused on, one day at a time.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
Know your limits. We all have them, but we don't always articulate them. Know how much money you can burn from your savings without compromising yourself or your family. Know how much time you can dedicate to your customers without sacrificing the time you spend with your friends and family. Know your success metrics and risk thresholds so you can objectively see how your business is succeeding and where opportunities need your focus. Know yourself! If you know you can develop tunnel vision, reach out to your community of resources so they know when to step in and tap you on the shoulder for a break. There's a reason why flight attendants tell you to put your mask on before helping anyone else. If you don't take care of yourself, you can't take care of anyone else.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
Our biggest challenge is ourselves, right now. GenX is the walk-home-from-school-alone-latchkey-out-until-the-street-lights-are-on generation. We don't need help from anyone, generation. We grew up being told that if we went to college, got a good job at a good company, paid into a 401K and Social Security, we'd be taken care of when we retire. But the rules have changed. It's no one's fault and blame has no place here, but ignoring this reality is financially dangerous. Getting women 50+ who have raised a family, run a business, held public office, built skyscrapers, etc. to understand that they may need assistance bridging the gap between now and retirement, is a tough sell.
This is also our greatest opportunity. Helping women reposition themselves within their role, increase visibility, broaden their networks, etc. is the most fun and fulfilling way I can see as my own bridge to retirement. The industries that are currently being hit the hardest with AI are the ones dominated by women of a certain age and the runway isn't as long as it used to be.
My original bridge was taken away from me because I got comfortable. I had a great job, with great pay and great benefits and someone else decided my skills were no longer needed; I was no longer needed. I don't guarantee that won't happen to any of our clients, but what I can guarantee is that we will help every single client to understand their vulnerabilities and help them position themselves better. If nothing else, we help people open their eyes to the possibilities whether they're internal or external.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
Honesty in all things. Tell it to me straight. I'd rather hear the hard truth than suffer from a well-intentioned lie. That's how I live my life, raise my children and that's how I run my business.
Her Content Hub
Articles by Michiko
The Bridge, Not the Pivot: Career Moves for Women Who Are Not Starting Over
Finding stability near retirement: Why bridges matter more than reinvention when you lose your job later in life.
My severance runs out soon, and when it does, I’ll be picking up the full cost of health insurance for me and my two children. Instead of celebrating the return of Pumpkin Spice Lattes and sweaters, I’m calling insurance brokers to find out how much of my retirement is going to go toward giving us some element of protection should our health go sideways.
People talk about the big stuff when you lose a job: reinvention, fresh starts, “finding your passion.” What almost no one mentions are the small, relentless expenses that drain your savings long before you’ve figured out your next move. Friends meant well, but a lot of the advice I got sounded like it was written for women who are still choosing between starting a family and chasing a promotion. I wasn’t either.
If you’re still employed, the most practical bridge is usually inside your own company. You already have a reputation. Moving toward work that’s hard to replace—the cross-functional, judgment-heavy, “call her when this breaks” kind of work—can potentially protect your income and benefits while reducing how exposed you are when budgets tighten. Whether the role comes with a bigger title matters less than whether it puts you closer to next year’s headcount decisions. If I’d understood that earlier, I would have taken a lateral move that put me in the room where decisions were made instead of the shinier title that didn’t.
The problem is that most realistic bridge options get framed as consolation prizes. A lateral move looks, at least on paper, like you’ve stopped climbing. But that’s only true if you’re measuring everything against a ladder that was never built for the last decade of a career.
If you’re unemployed, the pivot starts to look tempting because the safety net is gone. But a pivot assumes the most important thing right now is the freedom to reinvent yourself. For a woman close to retirement, I’d argue the most important thing is continuity, and income is the biggest part of that. Real pivots come with gaps: retraining, credentials, slow first years. A gap at 55 costs more than a gap at 35 because you have fewer years to recover if it doesn’t go the way you hoped.
Reputation is the quieter part of this. After twenty-plus years, people know what you’re good at. They call you for a certain kind of problem, and they recommend you when someone else has that same problem. A full pivot asks you to walk into a new field as a stranger, which is hard at any age and even harder now.
The numbers make this even sharper. Transamerica’s research, reported in Forbes this summer, puts median household retirement savings for women in my generation at $77,000, compared with $125,000 for men. Less saved means less room for a lean year. And the hiring market isn’t neutral about who gets a fresh start. Economists David Neumark, Ian Burn, and Patrick Button sent out more than 40,000 job applications in a field experiment published in the Journal of Political Economy. They found strong evidence of age discrimination in hiring against older women, especially those nearing retirement, with far less evidence against older men. Put those two findings together, and a pivot starts to look like rolling a set of loaded dice.
Fractional work is a real option, but people often judge it by comparing a day rate to a salary, which doesn’t tell you much. The better comparison is what it costs to keep the work going: the benefits you now pay yourself, the gaps between clients, and what it takes to keep you in the black. Two clients who already know your work and keep coming back may do more for your bridge than a full-time job in a field where you’re starting from zero, even if the annual number is a little lower.
Advisory roles are another path that gets overlooked because they rarely add up to a full income. They don’t need to. A board seat or a monthly call with a founder who needs your judgment can be one of several income streams. And it keeps your expertise current in a way a gap year never will.
Whether you choose a bridge or a pivot depends on your numbers, your risk tolerance, and, if we’re being honest, your energy. Before you decide, write down what each option preserves. How many months of income does it protect? Will the people who already know your work still be able to find you a year from now?
My own bridge is a business I’m building with my sister. From the outside, it might look like the kind of pivot I’m arguing against. The difference is that everything we’re building runs on what each of us spent two decades developing. The work changed shape, but the expertise underneath it carried over.
I don’t know what the future holds. What I do know is that starting over this close to the finish line isn’t an option. So I’ll sit here with my Pumpkin Spice Latte and warm sweater and pick out the right healthcare plan for my family, knowing the years I spent building my expertise still matter, even if my former employer disagrees.
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