Retirement for Women: Identity, Purpose, and Life After Work – Part 1 (Ep. 125)
Retirement can look settled financially and still leave you wondering who you’ll be when your career and title change. How do you prepare for the parts of retirement that don’t show up on a financial statement?
In this episode, I sit down with Kelly Ottman, PhD, Professor at Milwaukee School of Engineering and Executive Leadership Coach at Leadership Portals, LLC, to explore her research on how executives experience retirement. We look at why women may enter retirement with broader identities and social networks, yet still struggle with losing credibility, purpose, and voice.
Kelly also shares what she learned about spending anxiety after years of saving, the role of financial and non-financial planning, and why retirement may be better viewed as a period of renewal, repurposing, and possibility.
Kelly discusses:
- Why retirement can challenge identity even when someone feels financially prepared to leave a long career
- How women’s broader social roles can support retirement while the loss of professional credibility still hurts
- Why some retirees know they have enough on paper but still need confidence and permission to spend more freely
- How financial planning and non-financial planning can address different parts of the retirement transition
- Why retirement plans need room for changing health, family circumstances, relationships, and personal priorities
- And more!
Resources:
Connect with Eric Blake:
- www.TheSimplyRetirementPodcast.com
- Join the Simply Retirement Newsletter
- Ask a Question or Suggest a Topic for the Podcast
- Blake Wealth Management
- YouTube
Connect with Kelly Ottman:
About our Guest:
Dr. C. Kelly Ottman is an executive coach and consultant, keynote speaker, scholar, and award-winning professor with more than 25 years of experience developing leaders across the leadership lifespan. A former healthcare executive, she brings expertise grounded in a prestigious two-year executive development fellowship and a PhD in Organizational Leadership and Adult Education from the University of Wisconsin Madison. As an executive coach/consultant, Dr. Ottman partners with local, national, and global organizations and boards. Her clients range widely—from Fortune 500 executives to executive steel leaders, and even executive nuns. She has extensive global experience, with a particular focus on Asia, especially China and India. With a passion for service, she is currently the volunteer Executive Leadership Coach Coordinator for the WE Empower United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Challenge and the International Leadership Association. Emerging from the intersection of her coaching and academic work, Dr. Ottman recently completed a groundbreaking study on executives and the transition to retirement. This was supported as part of a protracted leave (research-focused sabbatical) as a business Professor at Milwaukee School of Engineering University (MSOE). To activate her research and extend her current coaching and consulting to include leadership beyond retirement, she is a Certified Professional Retirement Coach (CPRC) through the Retirement Coaches Association.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed