Photo credit: Lisa Keating
This writer is looking at middle age as a rapidly shrinking dot in the rear view mirror, but when it was closer, I wish I’d known about Chip Conley and the Modern Elder Academy (MEA).
MEA’s mission is to take people struggling with the negative aspect of a midlife crisis (oh my God, I’m not immortal) and turn that around. Instead of dreading midlife, MEA wants you to experience it as something positive, a time to grow not wither. To Conley and MEA that means committing to what they call Long Life Learning, and Conley wants to share that philosophy with more than just those with disposable income. According to MEA, it supplied scholarships to more than 50% of its current alums.
Outside MEA, Conley spent last year being vocal on the subject of older folks |
in the workforce. Conley spoke about this at numerous events in 2025, including
the Coaching.com Summit and the Phocuswright Conference. In those talks,
he emphasized the need for building a new relationship between age markers, something that’s becoming increasingly important in many companies where power is shifting to younger employees even as five generations have begun working together.
