Motivated, adaptable and seasoned by multiple technological revolutions, women over 50 bring exactly the judgment and emotional intelligence an AI-driven workplace runs on. Compliance and ethics executive Caveni Wong gathers voices from across the field to explain why recruiters who overlook them are missing a competitive edge.
If you were recruiting for a fast-paced company where frequent organizational changes and AI adoption are creating ambiguity, what qualities would you look for in a candidate beyond technical expertise? Would you consider adaptability, motivation, sound judgment and emotional intelligence to be important?
What if you found candidates possessing these qualities are often women over the age of 50?
That is the premise of the Fast Company article, “Why Women Over 50 Are the Future of Work in the Age of AI” by Laetitia Vitaud. Vitaud cited nine reasons, many of which deeply resonated with me.
And I’m not the only one. Several close friends and colleagues in ethics and compliance told me they feel much the same way.
Motivated, adaptable and ready to go
Contrary to popular belief, women over 50 are in no hurry to wind down. Whether their child-rearing years are mostly behind them and they’re enjoying a newfound freedom to pursue their own passions, interests and ambitions, or they have achieved significant success and are seeking the next stage of relevance, these women are motivated to make a difference and are doing so with an eagerness to learn and a lot of life experience under their belts.
Gwen Romack, CEO of Off Leash Ethics and Compliance Consulting, recently obtained a certification in AI governance to maximize innovation while having the tools to manage it responsibly. She is embracing AI in her client work: A project that previously took a week now takes 90 minutes. She uses the time saved to do what adds the most value, applying her expertise to lead investigations and discussions about enterprise risk.
This demographic is also motivated by something other than a steady income.
“Historically, men have been motivated by money, power and position, but women are more motivated by purpose, health and contribution,” said Beth Colling, senior vice president and chief compliance officer at global engineering and construction firm CDM Smith. Her observation echoes what researchers at Harvard Business School and in management science have found: women place greater weight on the social value of work.
Another longtime colleague in the field, who wished to remain anonymous, is highly motivated to contribute and carries a deep sense of purpose. She wants to spend her next 10 working years nurturing the next generation of talent and has adopted AI to speed up tasks such as investigation report writing.
“We have the muscle memory of changing really quickly, having gone through career transitions and radically different technologies,” she told me.
Her experience reflects what I hear across this community consistently.
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Using a new technology without considering or managing downstream consequences is irresponsible, and women over 50 know this firsthand.
“AI can speed up and improve the processes of many compliance activities, such as conducting investigations, writing communications and coming up with funny taglines, but it is not so good at anticipating consequences or balancing risks and rewards,” Romack told me. For her, experienced women are a good counterbalance to the go-go-go, build-now-and-fix-later mentality that dominates too many technology rollouts.
Colling agreed: “Women have the gift of discernment from having to juggle home and work so many times,” she said.
The need to keep a lot of balls in the air and manage myriad projects at home develops pattern recognition, the ability to foresee how things can go a certain way. This translates to being able to predict when things could go wrong. It is a skill that could save a company real money and avoid significant disruption and one that is hard to replicate without the requisite experience.
Bringing EI to the AI world
Wherever human beings are involved, so should emotional intelligence be called upon. And as AI takes over more of the transactional and analytical work, what remains is almost entirely human: relationships, judgment, trust and culture.
Emotional intelligence (EI) becomes more important in these cases, but it is arguably the most underappreciated skill that consistently over-delivers. Combined with professional experience, it promotes stability and productivity by developing human connections and intergenerational relationships that no algorithm can replicate.
“Women take the emotional intelligence gained from personal life into work,” Colling told me. “We tend to have the ability to mentor and create knowledge transfer, to see that person succeed and do well and to see everyone rise.”
Paula Young, vice president of legal, ethics and compliance at real estate technology provider Compass, put it practically: “We can mentor younger colleagues, stabilize teams and bridge cultural differences across generations. We know the lingo of a 22-year-old, what they do and how they act and use that to connect the dots and to find synergy.”
Kalpana Kothari, former EMEA Ethics and Compliance Director at Dentsu.
Indeed, the practice of celebrating and nurturing comes naturally to women of this age group. Maybe that’s because many of us started our careers at a time when fewer women leaders were visible, said Kalpana Kothari, former EMEA ethics and compliance director at advertising services firm Dentsu.
“We are supportive of one another, lifting each other up. We have earned, after joining a very different looking workforce in the ’90s and ’00s that had fewer women at the senior level, the confidence to support each other and not to undercut each other,” Kothari said.
An organization with a stable workforce where employees feel supported and valued is one that does not have to spend a lot of money recruiting and backfilling top performers who leave for a competitor.
Undaunted yet agile
We live in a world where crises brought about by geopolitics, natural disasters, organizational transformations and personal setbacks are constant. On top of that, women tend to leave the workforce more often than men to care for children or parents. The experience of pivoting builds confidence, which shows up as agility when confronted with the opportunity and uncertainty that AI brings.
Young’s life experiences, including marriage, divorce, purchasing a home on her own and single motherhood, power her ability to overcome tough situations in the workplace.
“When challenges happen at work, I know how to accept that change and move forward in a practical way,” she said.
Kalpana finds value in having lived through multiple technological revolutions, evolving from triplicate paper copies to agentic AI.
“We are not only used to small amounts of change but revolutionary changes, multiple times over,” she said. AI, for her, is just another technology to get good at.
The demographic as a secret weapon
Personally, I have never been as confident in my ability to make a difference and add value as I am now. I know the women I interviewed feel the same way.
I solved in a few days a technical problem that an established service provider could not solve in two years. I built a network of collaborative professionals at my last company whose help I could count on, and whom I supported in kind, to do our work better, more efficiently and more enjoyably.
Companies and recruiters that overlook this demographic are leaving real value on the table. It may be the productivity gained when people work well together. It may be the costly mistakes avoided when good judgment prevails. It may be the easier pivots when adapting to change without losing momentum. The fact that companies do not capture such metrics does not mean there is an absence of value, especially when stocks rise and fall on hundredths of a percentage point.
It is time to consider women over 50 not just as a target market for advertisers but as the secret weapon to thriving in the age of AI.
Caveni Wong is the founder and principal consultant of Principle Compliance, a boutique consultancy specializing in compliance programs that put policy into practice by applying change management principles. A Certified Compliance & Ethics Professional (CCEP) with 20 years of experience across industries, Caveni most recently served as the Americas ethics and compliance director at Dentsu and previously served in roles at LRN, IBM and EY. 
