Second Acts February 25, 2010, 5:00PM EST

The Road to Reinvention

Three case studies in career redemption—and reinvention—following setbacks

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Ginsburg swapped life as a TV producer for clothing design Ethan Pines

By Amy Feldman

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A writers' strike. A pink slip. The death of loved ones. For Marla Ginsburg, Todd Morris, and Kate Curran, these things sparked near-complete reinventions of their working selves. It's a process many Americans are wrestling with as the economic downturn seals off traditional career paths and forces workers, especially older ones, to get more creative about making a living. The financial trade-offs can be huge, but so can the satisfaction of taking a risk and landing on a new path. Here's how three people re-created their careers after professional or personal setbacks.

MARLA GINSBURG, 54

Marla Ginsburg had been a successful TV producer for two decades, with shows that included La Femme Nikita, when her life was disrupted by the three-month writers' strike that paralyzed Hollywood in 2007. She had no money coming in, two teenagers at home, and an unsettling sense that she couldn't go much further as an aging woman in an industry that favors the young. "I thought, if I could do anything else in the world, I'd love to have a talk show or design clothes," says Ginsburg. "They both seemed like such outrageous things to do. But there was nothing going on, so I went into a store and bought fabric." She didn't know the clothing business, and she'd never even sketched. But Ginsburg did see a real need: There weren't any clothes that she, as a fashionable middle-aged woman, wanted to wear. "There were all these grandma clothes out there, and I'm a boomer," she says.

In 2008 she launched Boombacouture, with funding from a clothing manufacturer with a factory in Peru. The clothes sold to Nordstrom (JWN) and specialty stores, Ginsburg says, but before the end of that year, with the economy in decline and consumer spending way down, her funder abruptly backed out.

Boombacouture was done, but Ginsburg's brief entrepreneurial stint bridged her to a new career. Last July, she was hired as creative director by FDJ French Dressing, a Canadian company that makes jeans for older women. FDJ had gone through its own financial troubles and restructured under new management.

Ginsburg sold her house in California at a loss and moved to Montreal with her kids. "Whoever thought that getting older could become a career?" she says with a laugh. The clothes she designs are made from fiber blends that are more breathable than cashmere and other wools, which helps them stand up to machine washing—and accommodate a menopausal woman's hot flashes. "I could have stayed in the entertainment industry, but I knew my shelf life," she says. "Even if I could have squeezed a few years out of it, I was done. I miss the money, but a whole new life came."

TODD MORRIS, 39

Todd Morris spent the first dozen years of his career selling software for companies like Apple (AAPL) and Adobe (ADBE). Seven years ago, while planning a 15-day rock-climbing trip in Thailand, he got the call no employee wants: His employer, Pumatech, was letting him go. He ended up turning his 15-day trip into a nine-month journey through Asia, funded by renting his New York apartment. He didn't have much of a plan for what he'd do when he got back.

Returning home, Morris started consulting and getting back into the software business. It wasn't long before Macromedia, a software company that was subsequently acquired by Adobe, offered him a job, and he realized he just couldn't continue on the same career path. It wasn't a well-thought-out process, just a realization that struck after the time he'd been away. "I would have felt like I was going backwards if I'd taken it, even though it was a higher-level position," recalls Morris. He turned down the job.

Some people might have done a lot of research or worked up a business plan.