Exploring Second Careers

CareerCast - Life-long Career Development

Libby Gill In this CareerCast, Libby Gill, media executive turned internationally respected executive coach, employee engagement expert, and best-selling author, will share her knowledge, experience, and real-world stories of how to explore and succeed in a second (third, fourth, or fifth) career.

Aired November 20, 2008

An entertainment industry veteran, Libby Gill spent 15 years heading public relations and corporation communications as senior vice president at Universal Studios and vice president at Sony Pictures Entertainment and Turner Broadcasting. She was also the PR/branding brain behind the launch of the Dr. Phil Show. Libby is now an internationally respected executive coach, employee engagement expert, and best-selling author. She has shared her success strategies on the Today Show, The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch, CNN, NPR, Oprah & Friends Radio Network, Fox News, and CBS Early Show, and in Time magazine, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, O magazine, Good Housekeeping, Self, and many more.

With a focus on inspiring excellence in times of uncertainty, Libby delivers keynote addresses and training programs for companies desiring to maximize a multigenerational workforce. Her “Clarify, Simplify, & Execute” process helps individuals and organizations increase employee engagement, create high-passion teams, and lead the Gen Y workforce to success, critically important as millions of baby boomers are poised for retirement, potentially taking decades of experience and expertise with them.

Among her corporate achievements, Libby is most proud of having guided many young employees to career success. Her former staff members now hold senior management positions at CBS Entertainment, ESPN, Universal, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Sony, Disney/ABC, and many other organizations. Her coaching clients have also achieved great success in transitioning from one industry to another, climbing the corporate ladder, and launching entrepreneurial ventures. Libby was instrumental in creating the comprehensive media launch that catapulted Dr. Phil to the highest ratings in daytime television since the Oprah Winfrey Show debuted.

After starting her career as a temporary office assistant, in just five years Libby worked her way up to VP of publicity, advertising, and promotion at Sony before moving on to Turner Broadcasting and Universal. In one of several unusual career moves, Libby then moved into a creative position and became vice president of television programming and development for Universal Studios USA. Having decided she needed to completely rebalance her life, Libby left the corporate world in November 2000 and founded Libby Gill & Company, which is focused on creating client success through powerful personal and business brands.

As she was reinventing her professional life, Libby’s personal life also underwent a major transition. She chronicled her journey of overcoming the self-perceived limitations left behind by a family legacy of alcoholism, divorce, and mental illness in her best-selling book Traveling Hopefully: How to Lose Your Baggage and Jumpstart Your Life (St. Martin’s Press).

Libby’s clients have included Microsoft, Pfizer, USAA, Lycos, Sprint, Capital One, Lockheed Martin, Deloitte & Touche, Hewlett-Packard, Natural Products Association, The Boeing Company, Triad Hospitals, PricewaterhouseCoopers, International Association of Administrative Professionals, Cadbury Schweppes, PitneyBowes, State Farm, Parsons Brinckerhoff, National Kitchen & Bath Association and more.

Libby, the mother of two teenage sons, lives in Los Angeles. She can sometimes be found chaperoning high school debate competitions or working backstage in the middle school drama department.

Encore: Finding Work That Matters in the Second Half of Life by Marc Freedman (2008) 

Career Management & Work-Life Integration: Using Self-Assessment to Navigate Contemporary Careers by Brad Harrington and Douglas T. Hall (2007) 

One Person/Multiple Careers: A New Model for Work/Life Success by Marci Alboher (2007) 

Career of Gold: Defeat Age Bias by Re-Careering for the Second Half of Your Life by Don Bracken (2006) 

Change Your Job, Change Your Life: Careering and Re-Careering in the New Boom by Ronald L. Krannich (2005) 

What Is Your Life’s Work? Answer the Big Question about What Really Matters—And Reawaken the Passion For What You Do by Bill Jensen (2005) 

Back in Control: How to Stay Sane, Productive, and Inspired in Your Career Transition by Diane Grimard Wilson (2004) 

Second Acts: Creating the Life You Really Want, Building the Career You Truly Desire by Stephen M. Pollan and Mark Levine (2003) 

Reinvent Your Career: Attain the Success You Desire and Deserve by Susan Wilson Solovic (2003) 

Don’t Stop the Career Clock: Rejecting the Myths of Aging for a New Way to Work in the 21st Century by Helen Harkness (1999) 

Pathfinder: How to Choose or Change Your Career for a Lifetime of Satisfaction and Success by Nicholas Lore (1998) 

It’s Only Too Late If You Don’t Start Now: How to Create Your Second Life at Any Age by Barbara Sher (1998) 

Second Careers: New Ways to Work after 50 by Caroline Bird (1992)