Second Act Stories

Joe Bock retired in 2008  after a long and successful career as an electrical engineer. But he always remembered his time back in grade school as a kid sitting on the sidelines and never getting into an athletic game. "I wanted to be athletic more than anything else." And when he retired he was determined to help "kids like me." So at 74 years old, he now runs a program called "Benchwarmer Basketb...

Deborah Shaw was an established costume designer in New York City. For 15 years she worked for "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" creating hundreds of costumes for the program. But when the show moved to Los Angeles, she decided to stay in New York and do something completely different. And her second act took her to Rikers Island, one of the most dangerous prisons in America. Starting in 2009, she b...

Laura Raposa and Steve Syre have been married for 30 years. And for most of that time they have worked in journalism – working as columnists for the two largest daily newspapers in Boston, Massachusetts. Laura worked as gossip columnist for at the Boston Herald. Steve worked just 1.5 miles away as a business columnist for the Boston Globe. In August 2015, they decided to make a change – a really b...

Dayna English was a highly successful investment banker at Merrill Lynch. She spent most of her career in Latin America. She flew first class, stayed at the Four Seasons when she traveled and wore tailored Chanel suits. But when Dayna turned 50, she traded all that in become a public school teacher. It's been a tough, tough road. But every day for the last ten years she gets on her bike in Manhatt...

Kerri Martin was working a comfortable IT job and enjoying life in New York City. But when she watched the first of two planes crash into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, she knew it was time to do something else. She followed her love of cycling and created a unique non-profit in Asbury Park, New Jersey called Second Life Bikes. This community bike store is best known for their "Earn...

Mark Salvacion had been a lawyer for 25 years but increasingly felt the focus on "making money" and "evading the law in the right way" was crushing his soul. The final straw…after he uncovered a specific instance of fraud within his company and refused to sweep it under the rug, he was fired within two weeks. So in his early 50s, Mark switched gears from his work as a corporate lawyer and decided...

Dr. Harry Strulovici was a successful plastic surgeon with a thriving practice in Michigan. But when his father passed away, he took a close look at his own life. He went back to school, enrolling in a global health program at the New York University Schools of Medicine. And then through a different program run by Yale University and Johnson & Johnson, he went to Uganda to work for a three-month p...

Jorge Alvarez came to the United States from Honduras at the age of seven. He grew up with his mother and his sister in tough circumstances in the Bronx. This episode is more about life change rather than career change. Jorge's story focuses overcoming an addiction to alcohol and drugs. His second act finds him clean and sober and working for a sustainable recycling company. He manages a team of t...