Life, Leadership & Stories From The Vineyard

Fifty may feel like the final chapter of youth, but sixty marks the beginning of something entirely different: Adulthood 2.0. As careers slow and priorities shift, aging becomes less about achievement and accumulation and more about purpose, creativity, and connection. Retirement is not an ending, but an opportunity to apply a lifetime of experience in new and meaningful ways.

Entrepreneurship is about more than money, it’s about embracing challenge, taking risks, and, perhaps hardest of all, knowing when it’s time to let go. Drawing from her own experience, Susan shares the lessons she learned from building a winery and facing the “Founder’s Dilemma.”

One of my beehives is thriving while the other sits nearly silent. The difference comes down to a single factor: the queen. As I watch the weaker hive struggle, I’m reminded that leadership matters everywhere, from beehives to businesses, and that nature has a remarkable way of finding a path forward when leadership is lost.

Susan Sokol Blosser shares reflections from a recent acceptance speech after receiving the Ambassador Award from the Oregon Consular Corps at this year’s Celebration Trade Gala. In her remarks, she looks back on the bold beginnings of Oregon’s wine industry, the cultural significance of wine around the world, and the legacy of family wineries that helped shape Oregon agriculture into what it is today.

What’s happening now is long overdue. Women are getting attention now which was denied them in the past because the playing field is changing. Women who made names for themselves when young are leading the way. Age has made them wiser, more confident, more influential. 

Twenty years ago, stepping into what felt like “elderhood,” I saw only what time had taken, gray hair, wrinkles, tired eyes. But a small book placed in my hands shifted everything.