Leanne Clark-Shirley, President and CEO of America Society on Aging, on Leadership and the Workforce

What happens to leadership when there are more people over 60 than children under 18? In this episode of Leadership NOW, Leanne Clark-Shirley argues that aging is not a side issue for HR to manage later. It is the megatrend that should be at the center of leaders' thoughts on talent, culture, and strategy.

Leanne is the president and CEO of the American Society on Aging, a seventy-one-year-old organization she describes as “the largest multidisciplinary professional home for everyone who cares about aging in some way.” She is a social gerontologist who has spent more than twenty years in aging-related nonprofit, consulting, and academic roles, including senior work at AARP, policy research, and impact measurement.

In our conversation, we get into:

✅ why she calls aging “the mega trend of our moment” and what that means for leaders

✅ how organizations quietly file age under pensions and benefits instead of strategy

✅ the trouble with words like “elderly” and how language quietly rigs systems

✅ why older entrepreneurs are more likely to succeed than younger founders

✅ practical ways to design with age in the room, not around it

✅ how to build genuinely inter-age relationships at work so wisdom and opportunity move in all directions

More about Leanne Clark-Shirley and the American Society on Aging:

Visit ASA: https://www.asaging.org

Follow Leanne on LinkedIn:   / lclarkshirley  

More about Dan Pontefract and Leadership NOW:

Dan Pontefract is a leadership strategist, keynote speaker and award-winning author of five books, including Work-Life Bloom, Lead. Care. Win., Open to Think, The Purpose Effect, and Flat Army. He is a Thinkers50 Radar honouree and host of the Leadership NOW podcast and video series.

Learn more at: https://www.danpontefract.com

Listen to more episodes of Leadership NOW: https://www.danpontefract.com/podcast/

If this conversation helped you rethink age and leadership, please like the video, subscribe to the channel, and share it with someone who still treats aging as an afterthought rather than a design principle.