Surviving the Sandwich Generation
Ages & Stages: How Women Work & Lead Across Seasons of Life
Mid-career professionals face a growing challenge today. They raise young children while also caring for aging parents. This dual pressure turns daily life into a complex balancing act. The strain of healthcare logistics, financial choices, leadership pressures, and relational roles can leave us exhausted. In this session, we will explore:
How do you manage key work commitments alongside unpredictable family needs and crises?
How can households share caregiving as a team instead of defaulting to traditional gender roles?
Where can you find real relief, community support, and shared help when you feel stretched thin?
Which spiritual practices refresh your soul when daily demands feel overwhelming?
Watch
Marketing & Communications Manger, Jasper
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Amber Payne is a marketing and communications professional, creative entrepreneur, wife, and mom. She and her husband, Ryan, have two sons, Max, who is in college, and Jack, who is a senior in high school, each finding their way into adulthood. Like many in the “Sandwich Generation,” she is learning to balance supporting her children while also caring for and staying connected to aging family members, including her father, who is in a nursing home, as well as her aging mother and mother-in-law. She navigates this season with faith, humor, flexibility, and a deep appreciation for the people she loves.
President and Partner, Development Counsellors International (DCI)
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Julie Curtin is President of the Economic Development practice and a Partner at Development Counsellors International (DCI), founded in 1960 and specializing in economic development, talent attraction, and tourism marketing for more than 500 cities, counties, regions, states, and countries worldwide.
Appointed President of the Economic Development practice in 2018, Julie is a frequent speaker for cities, states, and the International Economic Development Council (IEDC) on economic development marketing, talent attraction, and public relations. She founded The DCI Marketing Summit, the only peer-led annual gathering for senior economic development marketers in the country.
Julie serves on IEDC's board of directors, chairing its Global Community & Awareness Standing Committee. In partnership with IEDC, she launched the pilot “Diversity Fellowship” program in 2022, providing a 10-week internship for young people of color in economic development.
A member of Eastern Hills Community Church, Julie co-founded Faith@Work, a group connecting working women who want to serve God through their careers. She holds a Journalism degree from the University of Kansas and lives in Denver with her husband, Steve, and their four grown children.
JANET SMITH-HILL
Former Chief Human Resources Officer, SSM Health
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Janet is a catalyst for individual and organizational performance, excellence, and growth. Janet’s ability to envision and achieve unprecedented outcomes is fueled by her passion to serve others through values-based, faith-inspired leadership. With a thirty-year+ track record as a transformational leader, Janet strengthens organizations by delivering high-impact leadership, cultural attunement, and ongoing talent development. As a strategic business partner and trusted advisor to leaders at all levels, she is known for modeling compassion with accountability, humility with fierce resolve, and curiosity with catalytic change. Having served as a two-time Chief People Officer for integrated delivery networks in the Southeast and Midwest over the past decade, she has recently stepped away to help care for her aging parents. Janet has been married for 36 years and has two adulting children. She is a baccalaureate-prepared registered nurse, holds a MSN in nursing administration, is a certified professional coach with executive and leadership concentrations, and is presently a doctoral candidate at Fuller Theological Seminary.
KATIE WUSSOW
COO and Co-Founder, Bell Rock Strategies
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Katie has spent more than twenty years in professional services, designing and running the systems that make organizations work. She's currently the co-founder and COO of Bell Rock Strategies, a training and consulting firm helping lawyers develop their AI skills — a business she started with Travis, her husband of 19 years. They live in Austin with their two teenage daughters and are members of Christ Church of Austin.
Her career has moved through seasons, as most women's do. She's held organizational leadership roles, started a business, gone overseas for ministry, and taken career breaks. For the past two years, she's been in the sandwich season, raising teenagers while supporting aging and ill parents.
In every one of those seasons, she has found God faithful. Katie looks forward to sharing what she's learned and encouraging other women in whatever season they are in.
THANK YOU TO OUR PARTNERS
Dive Deeper
Practicing Solitude
Silence and solitude are related practices aimed at clearing away distractions in our life so we might be more attentive to God. These disciplines directly contend with the way power, influence, and self-worth play out in many of our workplaces. Download the free guide from Denver Institute for Faith & Work to learn more.
How to survive ‘mid-career burnout’: When caregiving, parenting, and growing work duties collide
Enjoy this article by Fast Company, about this season of life. (not faith-based) Excerpt: Both personal and professional demands escalate for workers as they hit their 40s and beyond. But aligning work with inner purpose can alleviate some of the stress, experts say. Today, mid-career professionals are part of the “sandwich generation,” who are having kids later while their own parents live longer.
Sacred Rest: Recover Your Life, Renew Your Energy, Restore Your Sanity
Staying busy is easy. Staying well rested-now there's a challenge. How can you keep your energy, happiness, creativity, and relationships fresh and thriving in the midst of never-ending family demands, career pressures, and the stress of everyday life? In Sacred Rest, Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith, a board-certified internal medicine doctor, reveals why rest can no longer remain optional.
ABOUT THE SERIES
Ages & Stages
HOW WOMEN WORK & LEAD ACROSS SEASONS OF LIFE
Many of us know the pressure of balancing professional ambitions with personal calling. Yet standard workplace advice often misses the real tensions Christian women encounter across different life stages.
Whether you are navigating unpaid labor, leading solo, managing a dual front of family care, or bridging generational divides at work, your calling is a whole-life response to God.
Join Women, Work, & Calling as we host Season 2 of Ages & Stages—a four-part webinar series exploring the challenges and opportunities unique to distinct life seasons. Each webinar features the experiences of women who are living and leading through these seasons.
EXPLORE OTHER UPCOMING WEBINARS
Thursday, October 8
12:30 - 1:30 p.m. MST