We wrote a post about Barbara Beskind almost two years ago, but she’s still making news:
“At 91, Barbara Beskind is three times the age of many of the people around the table. She was hired at IDEO (a design and innovation consulting firm) two years ago, after she saw a 60 Minutes segment on the company’s founder, David Kelley. She wrote a letter to IDEO—she found the company’s reliance on multidisciplinary problem-solving teams ‘most impressive,’ and thought her 44-year career in applied design and occupational therapy could be valuable to the organization.” IDEO agreed.
Paul Irving, chairman of the Milken Institute’s Center for the Future of Aging, a think tank based in Santa Monica, CA, observed, “If you think that the only cool thing about her is that she’s old, you’re missing something else really important. She brings an incredibly complementary skill set to the other workers at IDEO, and that makes IDEO a better business.”
Read more about Barbara Beskind and the value of older workers in a post from Pacific Standard entitled, “The Aging Advantage.”
