Barbara Waxman MS, MPA, PCC
Barbara Waxman envisions our midlife years as a vibrant, extraordinary time to unearth accumulated wisdom. An advocate who helped redefine this period as the life stage Middlescence, she rejects the ageist trope of middle age as a destabilizing period of suffocating stasis. Her recent TEDx Talk, The Myth of the Midlife Crisis, explores the ageist origins of midlife myths and empowers viewers to join her mission to shift attitudes about aging by embracing Middlescence as a life stage filled with potential for meaningful impact.
The founder of Odyssey Group Coaching, Barbara helps adults in midlife thrive personally and professionally using her singular executive and life coaching model, Entrepreneurship Turned Inward©, and her proprietary, science-based Five Essential Elements© and Five to Thrive Quiz©. She is one of the only gerontologist-coaches in the United States incorporating such cutting-edge research. Employing compassion, honesty, and a light heart, she has inspired and motivated thousands of individuals and senior-level leaders.
Barbara is an Advisory Council Member for the Stanford Center on Longevity, a faculty member at Chip Conley’s Modern Elder Academy, and an angel investor in the Active Aging and Longevity Fund with Portfolia. She has appeared on CBS This Morning, and has been featured in Marin Magazine and Arianna Huffington’s Thrive Global. She is the author of two books examining aging, most recently, The Middlescence Manifesto: Igniting the Passion of Midlife. Barbara earned master’s degrees in Public Administration and Gerontology from the University of Southern California and coaching certifications from the International Coach Federation and The Hudson Institute.
An inveterate globetrotter, Barbara has lived in Italy and recently spent time on a leadership journey in India. Her community involvement includes work with ExtraFood.org and Beyond Differences, an organization that works to end social isolation in middle school. A lifelong learner, hiker, yogi, and sometimes chef, Barbara challenges herself to try new things, see new places, and look beyond the expected. Originally from New York, she lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband, Scott, and is thankful to have her adult children not too far away.
