How women over 40 can use personal branding to reclaim their careers

For decades, Cindy Gallop worked in the advertising industry, building brands. But at 45, she stepped away from her career and built her own. Now, at 66, she’s known as the founder of sextech, has one of the most-watched TEDx videos on YouTube, and is building her own startup, Make Love Not Porn.

“I’m a great believer in using your personal brand to be your own filter. I sum up my personal brand with the tagline, ‘I like to blow shit up.’ I am the Michael Bay of business,” said Gallop.

Her words could well represent the sentiments of middle-aged women the world over. Across industries, women in midlife are turning decades of hard-won expertise into public-facing personal brands. Many have found it’s one of the few forms of career capital that doesn’t depreciate with age.

The Visibility Problem Personal Branding Is Solving

Despite decades of experience, midlife women remain persistently underrecognized in traditional workplaces. Researchers call this “gendered ageism.” It’s the combined effect of sexism and ageism, and it leaves professional women feeling like there’s no “right age.”

A 2025 global survey of women across 46 countries found that roughly 78% had encountered age-related discrimination in their careers. But research also finds that most women say they don’t want to step down or exit the workforce. They want to advance.

When they can’t find that path inside their current organization, they’re increasingly building one outside it.

Angela Kenzlowe, psychologist and MBA, helps leaders build psychologically safe teams to drive performance. She believes that having a personal brand in her 50s has kept her career fresh and her opportunities abundant, including a CNN appearance with Anderson Cooper. She maintains that it’s visibility, not competence, that’s the actual bottleneck for midlife women’s careers.

One survey found that 63% of women between 40 and 59 find entrepreneurship appealing and 64% already had a business idea. However, 78% haven’t acted on it, held back by financial concerns and fear of failure.

Building a personal brand can help with visibility and be the first step towards becoming an entrepreneur and reclaiming your career. It doesn’t require quitting a job, raising capital, or writing a business plan. It requires something many midlife women already have: visible proof of their expertise.

It’s a deliberate strategy for three things.

First, to establish authority in a specific area of expertise. Second, to attract opportunities and revenue that don’t depend on a single employer. And third, to reduce dependence on any one job or company for financial security.

The reframing of personal branding, from self-promotion to career infrastructure, highlights the value midlife women are finding in making themselves more visible.

Shae Byrnes is 49 and an executive advisor, speaker, and author. Her story illustrates all the dividends a personal brand can deliver once it’s in the public sphere.

“After 10+ years in corporate, building a personal brand created a path of opportunities beyond what I’d imagined,” Byrnes said. “What started as writing and podcasting eventually expanded into paid speaking and an executive advisory practice serving small business CEOs.”

Three Steps To Build Your Personal Brand

Having spent decades in working environments, women who are 40 and older already have a lot of experience to draw on. There are three steps they can take to create a personal brand that draws attention and opportunities.

First, own your lane of expertise. Where does your experience/knowledge lie, what do you care about, and what’s your distinctive point of view? Answering these questions honestly will help you create a niche where you truly become a category of one. For example, instead of your expertise being financial planning, you could establish yourself as the expert on financial planning for midlife professionals who have navigated a divorce and are rebuilding.

Second, map your visibility path. A personal brand can do nothing for you if it’s not in the public domain. You don’t need to post on social media all the time, but you do need to put yourself in the spotlight. This can include publishing on your website, running webinars, speaking at industry events, and being featured in the media.

Finally, work to turn visibility into opportunity. Your personal brand gives you credibility. Use this to put yourself forward for opportunities, whether for keynote speaking slots, employment opportunities, or developing an advisory practice. Your personal brand will do a lot of the heavy lifting for you, but you need to go after the opportunities you want.

Use Your Personal Brand to Reclaim Your Career

It remains to be seen whether personal branding marks a lasting shift in how midlife women build economic opportunity or is simply a workaround for ageism. What’s not in question is that personal branding has become something more than a buzzword.

By building a personal brand, midlife women are leveraging their decades of expertise and experience. This shift alone is evening the playing field and giving older women a fairer shot at opportunities.

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