Elizabeth Isele
Senior Fellow in Social Innovation
Recognized globally as a pioneering senior and intergenerational entrepreneurship expert, Elizabeth is leading a movement to transform the culture of aging and retirement. Her passion to ignite an Experienced Economy by unleashing the potential of 50+ year-olds to drive economic markets and generate social and environmental impact is grounded in data and metrics.
Elizabeth is part of the Experienced Economy. After a distinguished 30+ year career as an award-winning editor and author and with her four children grown and off on their own, Elizabeth was 70 when she founded SeniorEntrepreneurshipWorks in 2012. Almost immediately, she became the go-to person for all things regarding senior and intergenerational entrepreneurship (programs, policy, capitalization and research), including the Obama White House, US Congress, Clinton Global Initiative (CGI-America), EU Commission on Entrepreneurship, OECD, the Federal Reserve, the UN, the Gerontological Society of America (GSA), and global firms such as EY, among many others. She co-designed and was a key witness at the first ever US Senate Hearing on Senior Entrepreneurship in February 2014, which was broadcast on C-span.
In 2015, she created and produced for Jeff Skoll's Participant Media (An Inconvenient Truth, Charlie Wilson’s War, Fast Food Nation, The Help, Lincoln) and Fox Searchlight Pictures a Global Summit Series on Senior and Multi-Generational Entrepreneurship. The Summits took place in Dublin, London, Washington, DC, New York City, Brussels, Phoenix, St. Louis, Sydney, Australia, Auckland, New Zealand, and Santiago, Chile. In each city, 25 leaders, representing a cross sector of action-oriented experts from government, banking, microfinance, business, education, foundations, nonprofits and public policy attended. They worked collectively to build a Blueprint for Action to catalyze research, programs, and policies to advance senior and multi-generational entrepreneurship.
As a result of the successful summits, in 2017, Elizabeth expanded SeniorEntrepreneurshipWorks to found The Global Institute for Experienced Entrepreneurship, a comprehensive, cross-sector (business, government, education and research) ecosystem to catalyze and support cross-generational experience and entrepreneurship worldwide.
Elizabeth is a sought after speaker and is quoted often in NY Times, the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, PBS, NPR and Bloomberg Newsweek. She also writes for Forbes, Quartz and other major news outlets worldwide.
Two of her most recent articles are:
