Maddy Dychtwald is a nationally recognized author and leading expert on the changing demographic trends shaping the marketplace, the workplace, and our lives. Since cofounding Age Wave over 30 years ago, she has been deeply involved in investigating and forecasting the lifestyle, marketing, and retirement implications of the age wave. She has also emerged as an authority on the economic ascent of women and its impact on various industries, including financial services, health care, and consumer marketing.
Age Wave has a unique understanding of the body, mind, hopes and demands of new generations of maturing consumers and workers and their expectations, attitudes, hopes, and fears regarding retirement.
The Age Wave Opportunity
Over the next decade, leading industries, companies, governments, and major institutions will be challenged to transform their strategies, marketing, branding, distribution, product development, and workforce management to fully prepare for and capitalize on key trends created by a rapidly aging population. Since its inception in 1986, the firm has provided the nation’s leading corporations with highly effective, customizable services and products that help them position and prepare for the new mature marketplace.
“Maddy was fantastic. Her personal, interactive, and multi-media presentation style was an excellent role model for all speakers in this edu-tainment age. Her presentation injected new, powerful and provocative marketing paradigms into our business and inspired us greatly in our innovation drive.”
Nira Jang, USA Trends, Coca-Cola USA
“Maddy was terrific! The material was on target, extremely relevant and timely, and of vital importance to our membership. She took the steps necessary to learn as much as possible about our audience and their needs. That’s the kind of effort that guarantees the unbelievably positive response we received.”
Douglas E. Raymond, President & CEO, Retail Advertising & Marketing Association
“Maddy captured our attention from the start! Her dynamic, information rich and provocative presentation effectively demonstrated that we are all riding a wave that has the potential to propel organizations and individuals to new, exciting ways of working and living — or swamp us with uncertainty. Maddy’s excellent use of multimedia enabled us to hear and see the implications of this wave in our lives.”
Matt Kersey, Ph.D., Director, Product Development and Analytical Sciences, Stiefel, a GlaxoSmithKline company
“Maddy gave more than a presentation. She offered an exceptional degree of intellect, passion and knowledge that was both empowering and contagious. Through various channels and methods, including PowerPoint, video clips, statistics, personal stories and genuine conversation, Maddy truly engaged our female leaders. It is clear that Maddy not only understands the political, business and socioeconomic factors that shape the world for women today, but she has a firm grasp of how those trends will evolve and impact our world in the future – and is ahead of the curve in recognizing them.”
Joan Walker, Senior Vice President, Corporate Relations, Allstate Insurance Company
“Maddy’s presentation was great! The topics resonated with our members and were very timely. The presentation was particularly engaging and the members and made them think about things in a different way about themselves and their families.”
Karen Downer-Doyle, Vice President, U.S. Trust, Bank of America Private Wealth Management
“Thank you for sharing your incredible insights with us at Gold Forum. Your work is compelling!”
Charles G. Goldman, President & CEO, AssetMark, Inc.
“You rock! I have heard very few speakers so brilliantly keep an audience focused with a combination of spoken and audio-visual material. I have to tell you I was bowled over. You have a vital message for women – and men – with Influence and you match the vitality of the message with a vibrant delivery.”
Jane Glenn Haas, Former Columnist, Orange County Register and Founder of WomanSage
“The presentation before the Mayors’ Conference Thursday evening was simply stunning. It will be a night to be remembered for a long time to come.”
Don Blubaugh, Executive Director, Contra Costa Mayors’ Conference
“Amazing!!! I wasn’t expecting anything less! Clients loved her presentation!!!”
Robin Plywaczewski, Global Head of Women Empowered, Cognizant Technology Solutions
“There was so much buzz about your speech — you touched just the right cord. You left the attendees with some provocative things to think about — men and women alike.”
Diana Ruddick, Vice President of Communications, MassMutual
“Maddy’s presentation was thought-provoking on many levels. Many speakers referred to the information you presented in a very positive way about how we need to think about our customers and products given the powerful change in demographics.”
Kate Preston, Executive Vice President, St. Paul Travelers
“Maddy Dychtwald did an outstanding presentation. The program was very informative and was delivered in a powerful manner. Her insight and knowledge of the financial services industry provides a perfect ending to motivate the audience in taking advantage of the wonderful market opportunities.”
Gordon J. Sprague, Senior Vice President, AIM Distribution
“Please accept our thanks and appreciation for your willingness to serve as an outstanding keynoter and moderator during the Mature Women’s Summit. You are a true idea generator and leader of others.”
Carole Anderson, Vice President of Education, American Society on Aging
“Maddy was very much the keynote we like to work with —one who will learn more about our target audience. Over 90 percent of the audience told us they appreciated her knowledge of the industry in both the US and in Canada. We would recommend her to other organizations who are considering hiring her – she was definitely keynote material.”
Jennifer Hughey, Senior Editor, Conferences, Financial Services Group, Rogers Media Inc., Publishing
Their client list has included over half the Fortune 500 companies and government global leadership, including:
Influence: How Women’s Soaring Economic Power Will Transform Our World for the Better
Maddy is the author of Influence: How Women’s Soaring Economic Power Will Transform Our World for the Better; Cycles: How We Will Live, Work, and Buy (which was chosen as “Book of the Year” by the Community College Association), and an illustrated children’s book on personal reinvention entitled Gideon’s Dream: A Tale of New Beginnings. She is currently writing two new books: The Long Game: How to Live Long and Thrive and Your New Retirement Lifescape.
A high-impact speaker, Maddy has addressed more than 300,000 business and social service leaders worldwide, including the American Society on Aging, Allegiance Healthcare, Allstate Insurance, Blue Cross of California, Chevron, Direct Marketing Association, Fidelity Investments, Lincoln Financial, LPL Financial, National Association of Educators, the Network of Executive Women, and the World Future Society.
Maddy has been regularly featured in prominent media, including Bloomberg Businessweek, Forbes, Newsweek, Time, U.S. News & World Report, Fox Business News, CNBC, and NPR. She is a contributor to the Wall Street Journal’s Retirement Expert Panel, The Huffington Post, thirdage.com, and caring.com. She is also a founder of the nonprofit organization Women Against Alzheimer’s, and a board member of the BrightFocus Foundation, a nonprofit that funds early stage research to eradicate diseases of the brain and eye.
Committed to living long with as much health and vitality as possible, Maddy has personally focused on fitness, eating well, and meditation. For more than 30 years, she and her husband and Age Wave cofounder, Ken, annually renew their wedding vows in a different location by a different religious entity
Increasing longevity, declining fertility, and aging baby boomers are triggering an enormous age wave. This demographic tsunami has the potential to create tremendous marketplace and work/talent opportunities—and equally pressing social and financial challenges.
This informative and entertaining presentation will explore: How will people use their newfound longevity? How will a cyclic lifeplan replace the traditional linear model? How will aging boomers change established paradigms of work, leisure, learning, and retirement? What’s the most effective way to market and sell to “middlescent” boomers? And why is managing a four-generation workforce the new diversity mandate?
The convergence of rising longevity, today’s uncertain economy, and widespread insufficient savings has reset the retirement clock. Yet highly acclaimed Age Wave research reveals that the new retirement could be a good thing—for individuals, the consumer marketplace, and financial-planning professionals.
Why has financial peace of mind become far more important than wealth? How will women’s rising financial power transform the field of retirement planning? How will the demands of eldercare, sibling care, grandparenthood, singlehood, and “rehirement” impact retirement planning? This presentation will explore these questions and reveal how to safeguard a successful retirement while avoiding the five retirement “wildcards” that threaten to shatter dreams.
A critical mass of women—bolstered by education, unprecedented levels of workforce participation, and escalating income and wealth—are assuming increasingly powerful roles in financial management. The financial services industry must recalibrate in order to court this influential client base.
Drawing on insights from her landmark book, Influence: How Women’s Soaring Economic Power Will Change Our World for the Better, and decades of proprietary Age Wave research, Maddy answers questions such as: What are the core values/characteristics defining women investors? How will greater longevity catalyze women to plan more effectively for retirement? How do new family interdependencies impact women and their approach to money? How can financial service professionals most effectively communicate with women?
Whether we live our increasingly longer lives with vitality and purpose or with sickness and suffering will greatly depend on our ability to reshape the skills, services, and incentives of our current health care system.
This presentation provides a visionary glimpse into the future, outlining the critical course corrections required to support healthy aging and productive longevity. Topics covered include: preventing, delaying, and eliminating horrific diseases of aging (such as Alzheimer’s) with scientific breakthroughs, training health care professionals to become “aging-ready,” making disease prevention a national priority, shifting from hospitals and nursing facilities to home-based care with new technologies and emerging community services, and establishing a humane approach to end-of-life care.
For the first time in history, four generations of active adults are simultaneously participating in the workforce and marketplace. Each generation has its own lifestyle values, attitudes about work and money, means of connecting and communicating, role models, and marketplace preferences.
This high-impact presentation will examine the key social forces that have shaped each generation and produced their distinct, core lifetime characteristics. Proven generation-specific strategies for attracting and retaining valuable talent will be revealed, based on their specific career hopes, responses to styles of management, motivation drivers, and measures of success.
Despite the longstanding prevalence of fictional families that feature a working dad, stay-at-home mom, and 2.5 kids living under one roof in the suburbs, the reality of the modern American family is quite different.
How are economic, demographic, and cultural shifts impacting American families’ health and care needs, housing requirements, legacy decisions, and leisure choices? What is the modern family’s overall impact on the workforce, social services, and financial planning, and what are the particular implications for businesses and aging-services providers? This presentation covers four trends that are transforming today’s families: unprecedented longevity, family complexity, financial interdependence, and women’s rising influence