# Midlife Career Change: Use Existing Skills to Land Your Dream Role – Joanna Ehresman, Ep. 1

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/her-intentional-reset-7728413/midlife-career-change-use-existing-skills-to-land-your-dream-role-joanna-ehresman
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/her-intentional-reset-7728413/midlife-career-change-use-existing-skills-to-land-your-dream-role-joanna-ehresman.md
Podcast: [Her Intentional Reset: Career changes and second acts for women in midlife](https://stenobird.com/podcast/her-intentional-reset-7728413)
Published: 2026-04-07T08:45:00+00:00
Episode link: https://herintentionalreset.com/all-podcasts/xx
Audio file: https://episodes.captivate.fm/episode/92ec3598-db81-4db0-a948-557b78ee7d92.mp3
Processing state: not_requested
JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/her-intentional-reset-7728413/episodes/midlife-career-change-use-existing-skills-to-land-your-dream-role-joanna-ehresman
Duration seconds: 2539

## Resource

A midlife career change can feel like trading everything you've built for a leap into the unknown — especially when you're starting over in a field that doesn't know your name yet. If you're a woman over 40 staring down a layoff, a restless feeling, or a career that no longer fits, the question isn't whether to pivot — it's how to do it without throwing away 20 years of hard-won expertise. Joanna Ehresman spent 13 years as a senior marketing executive in wealth management before a layoff forced the question she'd been avoiding: what do I actually want? Her answer was interior design — a passion she'd dismissed for decades as impractical. Using a job shadow strategy and the transferable skills she already had, she created a brand-new role at Fika Design Group without a design degree, a portfolio, or a clear plan. Six months in, she's not looking back. WHAT YOU WILL LEARN: ▸ [00:03:34] Career pivot decision-making: why defaulting back to the same industry after a layoff can stall your second act — and what to do instead ▸ [00:09:42] Job shadow career exploration: how to get inside a new industry with no experience, no portfolio, and no perfect pitch ▸ [00:12:39] How to change careers using transferable skills: from a one-week shadow to a paid pilot to a primary role — the step-by-step ▸ [00:25:33] Financial planning for a midlife career change: the real income trade-offs, dual-income considerations, and how to decide if the numbers work ▸ [00:29:28] Identifying transferable skills women over 40 underestimate: and what Joanna's employers say her true superpower is If HIR has been valuable to you, you can support the show here: https://ko-fi.com/herintentionalreset No pressure — just making it easy for listeners who want to say so.

## Actions

- request_transcript: `POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/her-intentional-reset-7728413/episodes/midlife-career-change-use-existing-skills-to-land-your-dream-role-joanna-ehresman/transcription-requests` — Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode.
- read_markdown: `GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/her-intentional-reset-7728413/midlife-career-change-use-existing-skills-to-land-your-dream-role-joanna-ehresman.md` — Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource.

A page view does not enqueue transcription. Agents should invoke `request_transcript` explicitly when they need this episode processed.

## Transcript

Full transcripts are not published on public pages unless there is a clear rights basis.