Meet Sylvia Toense
Sylvia Toense spent 35 years building brands and driving global growth in corporate leadership roles. Then, in 2024, she did something bold: she walked away from a full-time career, asking herself not "What's next," but "Who do I want to be now?"
She calls this "The Shift." It's the deliberate work of evaluating your post-career life. And it involves figuring out what comes after you leave your title and a calendar full of meetings behind. Our society talks a lot about the financial side of retirement. “The Shift Playbook” tackles the rest of it: identity, purpose, and the rhythm of a day that no longer runs on someone else's schedule.
My Approach
Sylvia still shows up in leadership roles, as well. She serves as Senior Advisor for Fellowships at the World Trade Center Institute in Baltimore, where she also sits on the Board of Directors and helps select the International Business Leader of the Year.
As Head of Global Brand at T. Rowe Price, Sylvia led enterprise brand strategy, advertising, and social media, capping a run that included ten years growing the firm's marketing outside the U.S. and five years chairing its Global Marketing Executive Team. She also led the team behind the award-winning CONFIDENT CONVERSATIONS® on Retirement podcast. In her earlier chapters, she played vital roles at Legg Mason, Dynex Financial, and the Nasdaq Stock Market.
Sylvia holds a degree in communications from the University of Texas at Austin, an MBA from Johns Hopkins, and a certificate from the Securities Industry Institute at Wharton.
Sylvia believes the second act deserves as much intention as the first. She's living proof.