Why We Founded Lustre.
When we retired from our decades long careers, overnight the world treated us differently. Before we retired, we were relevant, vibrant and valuable. After we retired, we were seen as irrelevant, done…and old. The career women of our generation were hidden behind outdated stereotypes of retirement and age.
We launched Lustre to showcase retired career women as we really are. Lustre women are not old and not done. We are smart, relevant, visible and fun. We are approaching the retirement journey with a new attitude and new expectations. Lustre captures that fresh and edgy approach.
We remade the world once. Let’s do it again.
We wanted to create a community of women who feel like us and who refuse to succumb to 'old lady' images.
— Erica and Karen
About Erica and Karen.
We have known each other for a long time. We are both lawyers who married and had children while we worked. From the beginning, we knew we were kindred souls — in those early years, nobody else was wearing leather or neon to work.
We loved the lives we chose, as career women, and we loved being part of that large group of women who worked until retirement. When we realized we were both retiring, we were excited. How would we use our careers to pivot to something new?
That excitement did not last. We couldn't see any attractive role models. Indeed, retirement looked dismal, and people looked at us as if we were dismal too.
That made no sense. And so we founded Lustre to redesign retirement for women like us.
The Lustre Founders
Erica Baird
I am a mother, wife (second marriage), lawyer and the eldest of six siblings. My life and career have exceeded my wildest expectations. Undoubtedly a lot of luck was involved. However it happened, I am grateful.
After law school at NYU, working as a litigator at a mid-sized Park Avenue law firm, and giving birth to my daughter, it was time for another change. I was the first woman hired in the General Counsel’s office of one of the then Big 8 accounting firms. I became the first female partner in that office and the Deputy General Counsel. I worked for the same firm three decades. I loved my job, the people I worked with, the extremely talented women I mentored and helped to promote. I loved networking, connecting people around the world, solving problems big and small, at home and abroad. I ran to fires, not away from them.
We worked as a team, did some bold things, and lost a lot of sleep, but we laughed, didn’t take ourselves too seriously and had a really good time. I wore 3+ inch heels, red and black leather, orange suits, short(ish) skirts, high boots—they made life at work even more interesting. Thankfully, accountants really are tolerant, forgiving and have a sense of humor!
My work was consuming and important; my family was and is equally consuming and even more important. Family, and particularly my daughter, always won when the choice was clear—and I have to say that nobody I ever worked with questioned that. It was a given. The harder times were when there was no clear winner between competing demands. Mistakes were inevitably made, and hopefully forgiven. Everyone knows what that feels like.
So that brings me to now. I have created a portfolio, combining work and passion. I sit on the national and local chapters of Friends of the Children, a non-profit providing full time professional mentors to high risk kids from K-12, no matter what. I take design classes with new friends, and play Scrabble and newly-learned canasta with my oldest one. I am a fellow in the CEO Action for Racial Equity fellowship. But Lustre, changing the way we think about ourselves and the world thinks about us, is my priority. It's foundational and rewarding and it’s fun. There's a whole new world out there. Let’s do this.
Karen E. Wagner
My parents were diplomats. I grew up in exotic countries, and sailed back home every few years to New York City, my shining city on the hill. My goal, from childhood, was to live here, in the tallest building I could find.
I came to the City as soon as I could, to NYU Law School, and I have lived here ever since.
To my own great surprise, I became a corporate litigator. I could not have asked for a better career. I was in courtrooms, and boardrooms, on matters involving international finance, fraud, baseball, aerospace, steel, construction and many other aspects of corporate life. I also represented people and institutions acting for social good. I loved it all.
There were very few women around in the early years, which sometimes led to funny circumstances, like no ladies room on the boardroom floor. Happily, the numbers of both women and women’s rooms have grown.
I became the first woman litigation partner at a global law firm with historic roots—likely in part because I worked in color. (Courtroom sketch artists took out all their colored pencils when they knew I would be appearing.) My neon suits and splashy high heels were surely part of my success. I could be seen in the sea of blue and gray men.
I did not have time to marry right away, but when I did I chose well. My husband and I brought twin children into the world, and our journey with them has been amazing.
After four decades of practice, I retired at the end of 2014. After learning to fly, a long-held ambition, I started working with Erica to create a retirement that will be as purposeful and fun as my working life. Lustre has been more fun than we ever imagined, and we have met more fascinating people through Lustre than we ever imagined.
I look forward to seeing where we all go as we change the world, again.