This important book shares insights derived from surveys, interviews, and focus groups conducted with a diverse group of first-wave Baby Boomer female professionals (born 1946-1956). These individuals changed the workplace in the 1970s and are now changing views of retirement. In Thriving in Retirement: Lessons from Baby Boomer Women, profiles of highly diverse professional women are interwoven with information gleaned from surveys, interviews, and focus groups, thereby allowing readers to identify with individuals similar to themselves, whether through profession, education, personal concerns, or demographics. In spite of dissimilarities in backgrounds, career paths, and personal experiences, these women have much in common. As they leave their full-time careers, they are committed to exploring new post-career identities while finding ways to stay engaged, share their professional expertise, and develop deeply held personal interests and passions they may have set aside in the past. The Baby Boomer women profiled here reveal details such as the early influences on their education and career choices, the aspects of their careers they enjoyed the most, the opportunities and roadblocks they encountered, as well as how they balanced marriage and family responsibilities with their careers. Readers will benefit from the examples set by these women, whose diversity and varying experiences provide inspiration for nearly anyone of retirement age who finds herself wondering "What's next?" * Provides a model for reflection to help Baby Boomer professional women understand who they are, their strengths and interests, and what they want to do as next steps when they leave their full-time careers * Offers compelling stories from women of a range of ethnic and geographic backgrounds, professions, and employment statuses as well as races, sexual orientations, and marital statuses to represent a bright, engaged cohort of women to whom readers can relate as colleagues * Asserts a new, future-oriented concept of retirement, where individuals draw on the strengths and expertise of their careers while actively engaging with others and exploring interests and passions they may have set aside in the past