In this episode of our flagship podcast One Take, we sit down with Libby Bentley, a punk musician and live music performer, for a candid 20-minute conversation about live music, performing on stage and the changes in the Miami music scene. No edits. No retakes. Just authentic insight.

Welcome to Your Gray Matters, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to ending age discrimination across advertising, marketing, and the creative industries.

At Your Gray Matters, we believe creativity and leadership don’t have an expiration date. Our mission is to fight ageism, elevate seasoned professionals, and celebrate wisdom at work.

👉 Learn more: ⁠https://www.your-gray-matters.org/⁠

👉 Support our mission:⁠https://www.your-gray-matters.org/donorbox⁠

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👉 The Scoop – I met Libby in the most fun circumstances, her band, Morbid Opera, was playing at the legendary Churchill’s Pub. I was standing about 3 feet from her, photographing, suddenly, a guy was picked up by the mosh pit and thrown up on stage.

Libby was punk at 17 and continues being punk at 64. She began her storied career after listening to some punk bands in Miami, with her friend Lisa, and thinking “those bands are pretty bad, if they can do it, we can do it”. So they started a punk band.

👉 Decisive Moment #1 – Forming her own band and performing live

👉 Unexpected change or event – The number of women-fronted bands today, a radical change (in punk) from the early days of the industry.

👉 What did she do? – Keep playing. Churchill’s can be overwhelming on a night like this. The mosh pit is rowdy, 300 people crammed into a small room, but Morbid Opera powered through. Life in a punk band is not stable, for sure, so musicians take every opportunity to play.

👉 About older workers – Maturity. Reliability. Libby is currently a professional pet sitter so, the other aspect: “I’m not going to throw a party in their house”. People who hire her can go to their event knowing that the house will be there, intact, when they come back.

In this episode of our flagship podcast One Take, we sit down with Rochelle Newman-Carrasco, a true icon of the US Hispanic Marketing industry, for a candid 20-minute conversation about growth, evolution and the courage to say “if not now, when?”. No edits. No retakes. Just authentic insight.

Welcome to Your Gray Matters, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to ending age discrimination across advertising, marketing, and the creative industries.

At Your Gray Matters, we believe creativity and leadership don’t have an expiration date. Our mission is to fight ageism, elevate seasoned professionals, and celebrate wisdom at work.

👉 Learn more: ⁠https://www.your-gray-matters.org/⁠

👉 Support our mission:⁠https://www.your-gray-matters.org/donorbox⁠

🔔 Subscribe now so you don't miss any episodes

👉 The Scoop – Rochelle Newman-Carrasco, a “gringa” was one of the earliest forces in the U.S. Hispanic Advertising industry, when she started working for Pedro Font, founder of Font & Vaamonde and one of the earliest Hispanic agencies. Eventually, she moved to the West Coast as President of F&V West and opened her own shop: Enlace Communications. An actress by training, Rochelle now dedicates about 40% of her time to her own projects.

👉 Decisive Moment #1 – Joined Pedro Font as his “girl Friday” even before there was a Font & Vaamonde office.

👉 Decisive Moment #2 – Tried to leave the entire industry and met Aaron Walton and joined Walton-Isaacson.

👉 Unexpected change or event – After 44 years in the business… the lack of growth of the U.S. Hispanic Market.

👉 What did she do? – At Walton-Isaacson she rethought Hispanic marketing itself, creating new conversations at the intersections of cultures. The entire Hispanic market began as a “multicultural” effort. Walton-Isaacson’s approach is to open up new possibilities of reframing and rethinking.

On the personal side, Rochelle also reached the “if not now, when” point and started to move on towards her own projects.

👉 About older workers – Talk to me about what you bring to the equation.

So, on the one hand, there's this sort of bias that the person's gonna be stuck in their ways, or that they're overqualified. So, we have to get rid of, stuck in their ways, overqualified, but those are all perceptions.

Tell me why my vast experience is not stuck in nostalgia

Experience: What am I doing to keep my chops, for lack of a better word, my skillsets not only fresh, but future focused.

As an older person, how do I prove to somebody like you that I'm future focused? Five words.

First of all, that your life is bigger. That it is in touch with contemporary culture. That you are contemporary, that you are not only a sponge that it comes to you and you absorb it, but also a seeker.

Tell me a story that makes you the narrator on the cusp of seeing things that we are not seeing. Tell me what you're seeing that you believe is a value to a current and future conversation about whatever role we're being hired for. So have that sort of worldview.

In this episode of our flagship podcast One Take, we sit down with Nelson Cortez, who for the past 2 decades has audited agency-bought media on behalf of clients, for a candid 20-minute conversation about the growing complexity of media and the need for a critical eye.

Welcome to Your Gray Matters, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to ending age discrimination across advertising, marketing, and the creative industries.

At Your Gray Matters, we believe creativity and leadership don’t have an expiration date. Our mission is to fight ageism, elevate seasoned professionals, and celebrate wisdom at work.

👉 Learn more: ⁠https://www.your-gray-matters.org/⁠

👉 Support our mission:⁠https://www.your-gray-matters.org/donorbox⁠

🔔 Subscribe now so you don't miss any episodes

👉 The Scoop – Nelson and his family left Venezuela, where he was the media director of one of the leading international ad agencies, for the US with nothing lined up. His network and reputation for being a hard and intelligent worker soon got several openings and he joined a media auditing company as a partner.

👉 Decisive Moment – The move to the US and starting all over again

👉 Unexpected change or event – For Nelson, there were no really unexpected changes in the auditing industry. Being in the thick of it (the first year they audited $35 billion) they saw the entire change from TV to digital in a gradual way. They also saw the increased complexity of digital buys as a gradual change.

👉 What did he do? – Nelson and his team (they now have 15 people working for them) are naturally implementing AI into the company. While AI has been successful in reducing the time and complexity of the different processes they employ, senior people are still needed to give clients actionable insights. And what clients pay for are these senior insights.

👉 About older workers – Particularly in media, their value, is the experience, the knowledge, these (older) people have the experience.