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People returning to work
after a career break:

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I call them relaunchers.

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These are people who have taken
career breaks for elder care,

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for childcare reasons,

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pursuing a personal interest,

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or a personal health issue.

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Closely related are
career transitioners of all kinds:

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veterans, military spouses,

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retirees coming out of retirement,

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or repatriating expats.

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Returning to work
after a career break is hard

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because of a disconnect
between the employers

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and the relaunchers.

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Employers can view hiring people
with a gap on their resume

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as a high-risk proposition,

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and individuals on career break
can have doubts about their abilities

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to relaunch their careers,

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especially if they've been out
for a long time.

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This disconnect is a problem
that I'm trying to help solve.

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Now, successful relaunchers
are everywhere and in every field.

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This is Sami Kafala.

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He's a nuclear physicist in the UK

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who took a five-year career break
to be home with his five children.

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The Singapore press recently wrote
about nurses returning to work

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after long career breaks.

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And speaking of long career breaks,

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this is Mimi Kahn.

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She's a social worker
in Orange County, California,

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who returned to work
in a social services organization

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after a 25-year career break.

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That's the longest career break
that I'm aware of.

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Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor

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took a five-year career break
early in her career.

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And this is Tracy Shapiro,
who took a 13-year career break.

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Tracy answered a call for essays
by the Today Show

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from people who were trying
to return to work

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but having a difficult time of it.

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Tracy wrote in that she was a mom of five
who loved her time at home,

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but she had gone through a divorce
and needed to return to work,

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plus she really wanted
to bring work back into her life

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because she loved working.

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Tracy was doing what so many of us do

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when we feel like we've put in
a good day in the job search.

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She was looking for a finance
or accounting role,

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and she had just spent
the last nine months

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very diligently researching
companies online

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and applying for jobs with no results.

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I met Tracy in June of 2011,

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when the Today Show asked me
if I could work with her

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to see if I could help her
turn things around.

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The first thing I told Tracy
was she had to get out of the house.

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I told her she had to go public
with her job search

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and tell everyone she knew
about her interest in returning to work.

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I also told her, "You are going
to have a lot of conversations

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that don't go anywhere.

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Expect that, and don't
be discouraged by it.

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There will be a handful

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that ultimately lead
to a job opportunity."

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I'll tell you what happened
with Tracy in a little bit,

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but I want to share with you
a discovery that I made

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when I was returning to work

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after my own career break of 11 years
out of the full-time workforce,

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and that is, that people's view of you
is frozen in time.

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What I mean by this is,
when you start to get in touch with people

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and you get back in touch
with those people from the past,

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the people with whom you worked
or went to school,

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they are going to remember you as you were

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before your career break,

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and that's even if your sense of self
has diminished over time,

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as happens with so many of us

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the farther removed we are
from our professional identities.

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So for example,
you might think of yourself

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as someone who looks like this.

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This is me, crazy after a day
of driving around in my minivan.

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Or here I am in the kitchen.

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But those people from the past,

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they don't know about any of this.

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They only remember you as you were,

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and it's a great confidence boost
to be back in touch with these people

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and hear their enthusiasm
about your interest in returning to work.

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There's one more thing I remember vividly
from my own career break,

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and that was that I hardly kept up
with the business news.

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My background is in finance,

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and I hardly kept up with any news

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when I was home caring
for my four young children,

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so I was afraid I'd go into an interview

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and start talking about a company
that didn't exist anymore.

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So I had to resubscribe
to the Wall Street Journal

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and read it for a good six months
cover to cover before I felt

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like I had a handle on what was going on
in the business world again.

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I believe relaunchers
are a gem of the workforce,

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and here's why.

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Think about our life stage:

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for those of us who took career breaks
for childcare reasons,

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we have fewer or no maternity leaves.

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We did that already.

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We have fewer spousal
or partner job relocations.

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We're in a more settled time of life.

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We have great work experience.

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We have a more mature perspective.

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We're not trying to find ourselves
at an employer's expense.

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Plus we have an energy,
an enthusiasm about returning to work

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precisely because we've been
away from it for a while.

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On the flip side, I speak with employers,

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and here are two concerns
that employers have

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about hiring relaunchers.

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The first one is, employers
are worried that relaunchers

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are technologically obsolete.

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Now, I can tell you,

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having been technologically
obsolete myself at one point,

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that it's a temporary condition.

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I had done my financial analysis
so long ago that I used Lotus 1-2-3.

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I don't know if anyone
can even remember back that far,

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but I had to relearn it on Excel.

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It actually wasn't that hard.
A lot of the commands are the same.

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I found PowerPoint much more challenging,

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but now I use PowerPoint all the time.

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I tell relaunchers that employers
expect them to come to the table

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with a working knowledge
of basic office management software,

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and if they're not up to speed,

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then it's their
responsibility to get there.

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And they do.

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The second area of concern
that employers have about relaunchers

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is they're worried that relaunchers
don't know what they want to do.

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I tell relaunchers that they need
to do the hard work

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to figure out whether their interests
and skills have changed

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or have not changed

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while they have been on career break.

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That's not the employer's job.

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It's the relauncher's responsibility
to demonstrate to the employer

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where they can add the most value.

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Back in 2010 I started noticing something.

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I had been tracking
return to work programs since 2008,

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and in 2010, I started noticing

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the use of a short-term
paid work opportunity,

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whether it was called
an internship or not,

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but an internship-like experience,

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as a way for professionals
to return to work.

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I saw Goldman Sachs and Sara Lee

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start corporate reentry
internship programs.

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I saw a returning engineer,
a nontraditional reentry candidate,

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apply for an entry-level
internship program in the military,

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and then get a permanent job afterward.

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I saw two universities
integrate internships

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into mid-career executive
education programs.

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So I wrote a report
about what I was seeing,

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and it became this article
for Harvard Business Review

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called "The 40-Year-Old Intern."

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I have to thank the editors
there for that title,

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and also for this artwork

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where you can see the 40-year-old intern
in the midst of all the college interns.

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And then, courtesy of Fox Business News,

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they called the concept
"The 50-Year-Old Intern."

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(Laughter)

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So five of the biggest
financial services companies

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have reentry internship programs
for returning finance professionals,

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and at this point,
hundreds of people have participated.

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These internships are paid,

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and the people who move on
to permanent roles

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are commanding competitive salaries.

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And now, seven of the biggest
engineering companies

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are piloting reentry internship programs
for returning engineers

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as part of an initiative
with the Society of Women Engineers.

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Now, why are companies embracing
the reentry internship?

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Because the internship allows the employer

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to base their hiring decision
on an actual work sample

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instead of a series of interviews,

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and the employer does not have to make
that permanent hiring decision

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until the internship period is over.

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This testing out period
removes the perceived risk

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that some managers attach
to hiring relaunchers,

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and they are attracting
excellent candidates

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who are turning into great hires.

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Think about how far we have come.

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Before this, most employers
were not interested

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in engaging with relaunchers at all,

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but now, not only
are programs being developed

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specifically with relaunchers in mind,

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but you can't even apply
for these programs

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unless you have a gap on your résumé.

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This is the mark of real change,

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of true institutional shift,

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because if we can solve
this problem for relaunchers,

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we can solve it for other
career transitioners too.

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In fact, an employer just told me

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that their veterans return to work program

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is based on their reentry
internship program.

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And there's no reason why there can't be
a retiree internship program.

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Different pool, same concept.

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So let me tell you
what happened with Tracy Shapiro.

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Remember that she had to tell
everyone she knew

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about her interest in returning to work.

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Well, one critical conversation
with another parent in her community

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led to a job offer for Tracy,

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and it was an accounting job
in a finance department.

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But it was a temp job.

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The company told her
there was a possibility

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it could turn into something more,
but no guarantees.

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This was in the fall of 2011.

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Tracy loved this company,
and she loved the people

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and the office was less
than 10 minutes from her house.

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So even though she had a second job offer

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at another company
for a permanent full-time role,

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she decided to take her chances
with this internship

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and hope for the best.

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Well, she ended up blowing away
all of their expectations,

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and the company not only
made her a permanent offer

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at the beginning of 2012,

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but they made it even more
interesting and challenging,

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because they knew what Tracy could handle.

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Fast forward to 2015,

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Tracy's been promoted.

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They've paid for her
to get her MBA at night.

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She's even hired another relauncher
for work for her.

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Tracy's temp job was a tryout,

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just like an internship,

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and it ended up being a win
for both Tracy and her employer.

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Now, my goal is to bring
the reentry internship concept

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to more and more employers,

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but in the meantime,

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if you are returning to work
after a career break,

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don't hesitate to suggest an internship
or an internship-like arrangement

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to an employer that does not have
a formal reentry internship program.

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Be their first success story,

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and you can be the example
for more relaunchers to come.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)