Midlife Mastery

NY Times Bestselling Author, Creativity Evangelist, Adventurer

Elizabeth Gilbert  

Awaken Your Magic in Midlife

Join Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love and All the Way to the River, for a transformative exploration  of how creativity and purpose evolve with age. Drawing on her own reinvention, Elizabeth shares how to navigate the shifts of midlife with curiosity instead of fear, and reveals how wisdom and wonder can become powerful tools for designing a life full of meaning, connection, and joy.

Journalist, Television Host, NY Times Bestselling Author

Hoda Kotb

Jump and Find Joy: Embracing Change in Every Season of Life

Learn how Hoda Kotb embraced motherhood after 50, reinvented her career multiple times, and found deeper joy through her life's biggest transitions. The former co-host of TODAY and author shares honest, hard-won wisdom on navigating career shifts, late-stage parenting, and redefining success on your own terms.

Author, Community Strategist, Faith Leader

Raymond A. Jetson

Aging While Black: A Radical Reimagining of Aging and Race in America

Discover how Raymond A. Jetson, community strategist, faith leader, and author of Aging While Black, challenges conventional narratives about midlife. Drawing on decades of ministry, public service, and community work, Raymond reveals how aging isn't passive decline – it's when you have real influence, build lasting legacy, and forge the generational connections that shape what comes after you.

Explorer, Author of the Blue Zones, Longevity Researcher

Dan Buettner

Blue Zones: Life Lessons from the World’s Healthiest Communities

In certain pockets of the world, people routinely live past 100 – not because of genetics or luck, but because of how they eat, move, connect, and find purpose. Dan Buettner, National Geographic Fellow and author of The Blue Zones, has spent decades studying these populations, and he'll share the surprisingly simple strategies that extend both lifespan and healthspan, proving it's not about willpower, but about the daily habits and communities we create around ourselves.

Bestselling Author, Speaker, Podcast Host

Rob Bell

Your Life As a Creative Act: Power & Possibility

Discover how Rob Bell – bestselling author of Love Wins and host of The RobCast – turned midlife upheaval into a creative awakening. At the height of his fame, he walked away from his megachurch and the spotlight that came with it. What followed was a rebirth. With curiosity as his compass, Rob dismantled the beliefs that once defined him and began again. In this conversation, he shares how doubt can be a teacher, endings can be invitations, and midlife can open into a freer, more imaginative way of living.

Bestselling Author, Essayist, TED Speaker

Pico Iyer

The Seasons of Life: Lessons in Renewal

Learn how acclaimed writer Pico Iyer finds grace and perspective in the shifting seasons of life. Drawing on lessons from Japan, the Dalai Lama, and cultures that honor aging as ripening, Pico reflects on why autumn carries a beauty that spring can’t match. He explores how meaning deepens as years accumulate, how purpose reshapes itself with time, and how the quiet rhythms of nature can teach us to move through change with presence, humor, and lightness.

Gerontologist, Master Coach, Stanford Advisor

Barbara Waxman

Your Longevity Lifeplan: Live Better, Longer

See how Barbara Waxman – gerontologist, Stanford longevity advisor, and author of The Middlescence Manifesto – is rewriting the story of aging. After years guiding CEOs and changemakers through the science of longevity, Barbara shows how real vitality comes not from gadgets or supplements but from daily choices that align body, purpose, and connection. She introduces the “Thirdspan,” a stage of life fueled by curiosity and contribution, and shares practical ways to stretch your healthspan, deepen relationships, and feel fully alive in midlife and beyond.

Poet, Philosopher, Author of The Fifth Season

Mark Nepo

The Fifth Season: Creativity and Meaning in the Second Half of Life

Beloved poet and philosopher Mark Nepo invites you to see aging as an awakening – a time when the creative fire doesn’t fade, but deepens. Drawing on decades of teaching and deep reflection, Mark explores how life’s challenges become material for beauty, how authenticity replaces ambition, and how meaning ripens when we stop striving to be someone and start being ourselves. He reveals how the second half of life can be a time of awakening, creativity, and quiet joy.

Gerontologist and author of Joyspan

Dr. Kerry Burnight

Joyspan: The Art and Science of Thriving in Life's Second Half

Gerontologist and NYT bestselling author Kerry Burnight, PhD, invites you to rethink aging as a time of expansion, not decline. Drawing on her research and her influential book Joyspan, she explores what it means to thrive in the second half of life – when purpose, happiness, and vitality are no longer tied to youth but to choice, connection, and contribution. Kerry reveals how endings can become powerful beginnings when we focus less on adding years and more on filling our years with meaning. Through her science-based yet deeply human lens, she offers us a roadmap for growing wiser, freer, and more alive with every transition.

Zen teacher, VP of Data & AI at Headspace, author of Buddha’s Diet and Buddha’s Office

Dan Zigmond

Mindful Endings, Better Beginnings

Zen teacher, writer, and technologist Dan Zigmond knows that how we end one chapter shapes how we begin the next. In this session, he'll guide you through the often-overlooked art of conscious closure, helping you navigate transitions with more attention and less turbulence. You'll learn simple meditation practices for the moments something ends, plus day-one strategies and portable habits that steady you through life's inevitable shifts, whether you're changing jobs, relationships, or entering a new life stage.

MEA Partner & Chief Content Officer

Kari Cardinale

The Anatomy of a Transition

Kari Cardinale, veteran facilitator, chief content officer at MEA, and co-author of MEA’s Anatomy of a Transition ebook, takes you inside the architecture of change. Using MEA’s transitions framework and the idea of Transitional Intelligence (TQ), she reframes endings as openings for reinvention. In this session, Kari helps you chart where you are in your own transition, navigate the uneasy middle, and start shaping what’s next. Her message is clear: midlife change isn’t about loss, it’s about listening for what’s calling you now and stepping toward it with purpose.