Podcast 50, Not Dead Gives Women a Platform to Talk About Careers and Life

According to recent census estimates, nearly 11,000 people in the United States turn 50 every day, and many need support at this critical juncture in their lives – particularly women. “Everyone faces ageism,” says Kamrin Huban, Barrington-based podcaster and career coach, “but women face a double whammy of ageism and sexism.”

Kamrin Huban’s podcast, 50, Not Dead, recorded its first episode in April 2020 and launched its third season in January of this year. “The podcast is designed to give women a platform to say what it’s like to be 50 in our society, and there is no shortage of women interested in talking about this,” Huban says. “We talk about what they’re facing in their careers and what they need. From a physiological standpoint, as women go through menopause they just don’t [care what people think] as much as they did when they were younger, and many women find great freedom in that.”   

In 2017, after 20 years spent forging her own career path through the corporate world, Huban encountered a toxic manager who left her exhausted and humiliated, questioning her own worth and competence. “I watched her burn through women and I knew it would eventually be my turn,” Huban says, “but I didn’t understand what it would feel like to be targeted like that.”

This dynamic became a draining, relentless 18-month cycle of degradation that Huban met with continually greater attempts to prove her worth to someone who would never value her. Eventually, concerned friends and her husband no longer recognized her, and convinced her to break a pattern she couldn’t fix alone. “I cried the night before I resigned because I loved the work. I didn’t want to resign,” she explains.

Huban spent months processing her experience with therapists and focusing on quality time with her daughter before she was ready to start the next chapter in her professional life. “Throughout my career, I had the opportunity to work with some incredible leadership coaches and I always thought that someday, I’d become a coach myself,” she says.

What happened next was a confluence of timing Huban couldn’t deny. “Brown University began offering a career coaching certification; I applied and was accepted,” she says. She loved the experience immediately. “I wanted to help other women who had been destroyed by their jobs and could no longer see who they were. I wanted to show them that they are not worthless, but rather that the job wasn’t the right fit.”

Huban received her certificate in March 2020 and because of the pandemic, found herself with unexpected down time that she used to network with people virtually. Before long she noticed a pattern. “I was hearing senior-level women with big jobs at big companies who, after the pandemic, said, ‘I may never work again. I may have to take a step down and take a massive pay cut.’ But the pandemic didn’t just happen to women over 50,” says Huban. “I was working with vibrant, intelligent women with a lot to offer the world and I was afraid they’d get lost – that a lack of self-confidence would keep them from aiming high enough.”

Huban once heard it said that the most invisible person on Earth is a mother in her 50s, which is a concept she rejects. “When I turned 50, I was having more impact than I ever imagined,” she explains. “I feel more alive, more hopeful and more excited than I have in a really long time, and I want to help other women in their 50s stop questioning their talent, recognize their value, and make the big changes they’re dreaming of.”

Learn about Kamrin Huban’s career coaching services at KamrinHuban.com and listen to her podcast at 50NotDead.com.