‘I’m 50 and I wish I’d known how capable I was’. Why Emma Willis proves that 50 could be your most powerful career decade yet

Claudia Winkleman found one of the biggest hits of her career with The Traitors in her fifties. Davina McCall has reinvented herself as a powerful voice for women’s health and launched her hugely successful Begin Again podcast. Alison Hammond became a presenter of The Great British Bake Off in 2025, the same year she turned 50, and then there is Emma Willis…

There is something rather fabulous about being handed the keys to one of television’s biggest, glitziest shows the same year you turn 50. Emma Willis has done just that, stepping into her biggest presenting role yet as one of the new hosts of Strictly Come Dancing - at exactly the age when women are so often told their professional best is behind them.

This week, she gave this rallying message to midlife women on tiktok: “I’m 50 and what I wish I’d known is how capable I was. I feel like I’ve had the brakes on for decades in my life, because I was always scared that I either wasn’t good enough, or wouldn’t succeed. It’s only in the last five years that I’ve gone, oh actually, you should give it a try because whatever happens, you’ll have given it a go. And I don’t think you’ll ever regret trying.”

But this isn’t just about TV presenters. What if 50, instead of being an age where we are supposed to become invisible, is actually a time to celebrate and lean into all the skills you’ve spent your entire adult life accumulating - experience, good judgement, resilience, relationships, confidence, communication, a much clearer sense of who you are, and importantly, what you can do. And what if these have become your greatest professional assets?

The annual Forbes 50 Over 50 list now celebrates hundreds of women who are creating companies, leading organisations, transforming industries and making an impact in the second half of their lives.

Experience as a superpower

The statistics certainly challenge the idea that turning 50 means winding down. The Department for Work and Pensions 2024 Employer Survey found that 84% of employers employed someone aged 50 or over. And when employers were asked what they valued about older workers, 83% cited experience, 62% reliability, 46% loyalty and 38% good communication skills. 

By this life stage, women have navigated difficult bosses, challenging projects, office politics, career highs, career lows and at least a few failures. We know how to read a room, to nurture and lead, to multi-task. We know how to deal with a crisis. And which battles are worth fighting - and which absolutely aren't.

That self-knowledge can be enormously powerful. As Rosie Nixon, author, coach and founder of Rosie's Reinvention Retreats proves. Rosie helps women navigate their midlife transformations – and which she shares in her new book The PRO Method: Pause, Reflect, Organise. In it, Rosie encourages women to thoughtfully and intentionally prepare for their next chapter not from a point of crisis, but consideration and celebration.

Rosie says. “Turning 50 is naturally a time when many of us pause to assess what is important to us now. It can serve as a pivotal point in our careers, where decades of navigating complex workplaces, personal shifts, and unexpected challenges yield two superpowers: deep self-awareness and a lower tolerance for ‘settling’ with what is no longer working or serving us. This can create a powerful moment for women professionally.”

The caring quota

In our 30s and 40s, millions of women find themselves running the invisible infrastructure of family life alongside their paid jobs: remembering appointments, organising childcare, managing competing diaries, navigating school politics, dealing with illness, advocating for relatives, solving problems before anyone else has even noticed them and somehow making sure everyone gets where they need to be.

Research from Rutgers Business School has identified 18 skills developed through caregiving, including time management, emotional intelligence, collaboration, conflict resolution, anticipation, multitasking and managing complexity - capabilities that overlap heavily with effective management and leadership. And yet somehow, we lose sight of these skills ourselves.

Midlife should begin with Me

It’s no coincidence then, that our fifties arrive at a particularly interesting point in family life. Children may be more independent and the daily intensity of family life can change. And somewhere in the middle of all that, there can suddenly be a little more mental space.

Not necessarily free time - let's not get carried away! - but space to ask questions that have been pushed down the priority list for years. What do I want? What am I capable of now?

At 47, I tentatively returned to the workplace 18 years after having my first child. For nearly two decades I had worked from home as an author and freelance journalist, fitting work around family life. I had always put my family first - and, without quite realising it, I had also put my own confidence, development and career ambitions second.

Two years earlier, I had found myself in the middle of perimenopause and feeling completely lost professionally. My CV felt like a record of everything I had not done recently rather than everything I could do. So I did something that terrified me. I rewrote my CV and forced myself to evaluate what I had achieved (written four novels, brought up three children, survived the grief of losing my daughter in pregnancy, become an advocate for that community, and used my comms skills in my own community, too). 

This task single-handedly turned every negative thought I’d had for years about my lack of up-to-date workplace skills into positive ones. I looked at my experience as a journalist, author and advocate, allowed myself to listen to the good things friends said about me, and set about finding a sector that my skills could transfer over to with the utmost confidence I had something powerful to offer.

Within a month I started a job in a fast-paced digital marketing and hospitality agency. It was a baptism of fire that burned out after six months, but not before I’d learned new skills, made new contacts and added a whole section to my CV. Three years later, on the cusp of 50, I am Communications and Marketing Manager for a babyloss charity close to my heart, and in a role that brings purpose and fulfilment and, importantly, makes me feel like I’m in completely the right place at this stage of life. I haven't become a different person. I've just leaned into the power of who I am right now.

The confidence to put yourself first

Professional life doesn't magically become easier at 50. Ageism exists. Caring responsibilities don't disappear (as children grow older and more independent, so our parents age and the sandwich years’ struggle begin). Returning after a career break can be daunting, but at 50, we might discover that we don't have to prove anything to anyone anymore. ‘Success’ is what we make it.

Rosie says: “In early and mid-career, ‘success’ is frequently external: the job title, salary band, external approval and social validation. In midlife, success becomes radically internal and values-aligned. We start to understand ourselves on a deeper level, connecting to our core values and working out what is ‘enough’ for us.”

Instead of asking whether 50 is too late to start again, we should be asking what becomes possible when we stop seeing age as a disadvantage.

Because by 50, you have something that cannot be fast-tracked. Lived experience. Our fifties don't have to be about looking back at what you've achieved. They can be about deciding what comes next. It can be about stepping into our power at exactly the right time of life.

Because perhaps the most powerful question we can ask ourselves, as Emma Willis says, isn't Is it too late? but instead… if not now, when?