🔒Closing the gap: How Maine business leaders are resetting after a career break

When Kristen Miale stepped down from leading Maine’s largest hunger relief organization in June 2023, she couldn’t have known that the next year would be the last of her mother’s life. Miale’s plan, after more than a decade as president of Good Shepherd Food Bank, was to take a year off to rest, reset and ruminate on her next career move. She didn’t start to search for a new job until the fall. She spent the summer taking walks in the woods and trips to the beach. She visited places like the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens in Boothbay Harbor for the first time. She also spent quality time with her mother, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and died in June 2024, by which time Miale had taken a role as a sell-side adviser to business owners with her brother-in-law at Caswell Advisory Group. Although she had looked at other nonprofits and applied for a job she didn’t get with the Nature Conservancy, her job search went faster than expected. Looking back, she’s grateful for the unexpected extra time with her mom to go out to lunch, play cards and have tea thanks to a more flexible schedule. “Going through the process of losing your mother sets priorities,” she says. “Before, I felt like my job was such a huge part of who I was, and now it’s a much smaller part of who I am and I’m OK with that.”

The 54-year-old Miale, who used to spend two hours a day commuting to and from Auburn, now works from a third-floor home office in Kennebunk she shares with her mother’s former cat Sabrina and has evenings and weekends free.

‘Catalysts for meaningful pivots’

Similar to rock stars taking breaks from touring and college graduates spending a “gap year” to travel or volunteer, a growing number of business and nonprofit leaders in their 40s, 50s and 60s are giving themselves time-outs of a year or more to reset. Motivations vary from health and family reasons to lifestyle goals that came into sharper focus during the pandemic. Besides Miale, Maine “gappers” who have landed on their feet include the co-founder and CEO of a solar energy company who took a year-long unpaid sabbatical to live abroad with his family; a former boarding-school administrator now working for an international nonprofit; and erstwhile law partner leading an economic development organization. While their exit — and return — paths have been different, they’ve all used self-imposed intermissions to recharge and reassess what matters most in their careers and personal lives. While there’s no official data tracking those who have temporarily taken themselves out of and back into the labor force, career coaches are seeing an uptick in professional pauses. “Prior to the pandemic, employment gaps were heavily scrutinized,” says Kyle Elliott, a Santa Barbara, Calif.-based coach to tech-industry senior managers and executives. “Now, executive headhunters and hiring managers are far more accepting of extended gaps making it less risky for senior leaders to step away and reset.” Among his clients in their 40s and 50s going through what he calls a “life-stage recalibration,” many have reached peak earnings potential and accumulated enough financial runway to take a pause as they confront big-picture questions about health, longevity and long-term fulfillment, he says. Becoming an “empty nester” when kids leave for college can accelerate the process. “For many executives, the ‘adult gap year’ is not about escaping work altogether, it’s about intentionally redesigning the back half of their careers with greater flexibility and accountability to fend off burnout,” Elliott notes. “Those breaks serve as catalysts for meaningful pivots, with leaders returning to the workforce in roles that prioritize impact, autonomy and work-life integration rather than title or compensation alone.”

‘Owning’ your story

Colleen Paulson, founder of Ageless Careers in Pittsburgh, has spotted a similar trend among her clients and weekly polls she conducts on LinkedIn. “As we grow older, our goals and priorities change, so it’s natural to think that our relationship with work will change as well,” she says. She also finds that despite today’s competitive job market, the once frowned-upon “resume gap” no longer raises red flags with employers for applicants who can highlight how they stayed active between jobs. “It comes down to being confident in the story that you’re telling and owning it,” she says. While there’s no rule about how much time away is too much, Scarborough-based career coach Debra Boggs points to one client who took nearly a decade off in a demanding field and now faces a return at a significantly lower professional tier. “If you’ve taken a couple of years off or left for caregiving, it’s really hard to reenter at the level you left,” says Boggs, founder and owner of D&S Executive Career Management. “Anyone can have a job tomorrow, but the right job at the right place with the right compensation takes time.” Boggs also recommends tapping into networks and warns against procrastinating: “If you are going to take a year off, that’s great, but start your job search at the six-month mark,” she says.

Solar executive recharges abroad

For Fortunat Mueller, 49, co-founder and CEO of ReVision Energy, taking a year-long unpaid sabbatical gave him and his family the chance to experience life abroad. They started in Arusha, Tanzania, where they rented a house for six months with the two girls — then in seventh and eighth grade — attending an international school.

“My wife and I, before we were married … talked about how we would like to do this when we have a family to help give our children some perspective on the world,” he says. During COVID, home-schooling, they revisited the idea and started planning. They also started telling people so they couldn’t back down and Mueller arranged for the time off. “We wanted to be in a place that is more diverse and pretty different from where we live in southern Maine, and Africa was very appealing to us,” he says. The family then went to Europe, originally intending to be based in Mueller’s birth country of Switzerland before opting for a more nomadic adventure. They travelled to 17 countries during the year, including Morocco and Turkey.

Leading with curiosity

While Mueller kept in touch with ReVision’s management team during his absence and remained a board member, he fully disengaged from his dual role as president and CEO of the South Portland-based firm owned by 400 employees across three states. He came back to a recalibrated C-suite role, as the CEO half of a two-person leadership team. “I’m focused a little bit more on strategic questions and a little less on operations,” Mueller says. On a more fundamental level, he says that he’s changed his leadership mindset. “One of the things I’m trying to do more is to lead with curiosity,” he says. “I am hard-wired to be a problem-solver and an answer giver, and I’m trying to not be that all the time.” Books have also become a bigger part of his life after he went through more than 50 tomes during his break, including “The Art of Possibility,” by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander. “It’s a great book for somebody in a mid-career spot thinking about how to show up in the world,” Mueller says. He spent the last two months of his 12 months off enjoying summer in Maine before returning to work. While the company has always informally supported sabbaticals, they are now part of its HR policy even at the risk of someone not returning. “That’s really healthy — we want people to be in the right seat,” Mueller says. “And if they discover they’re not in the right seat, we want to help them be where they should be.”

‘Making a difference’

In Franklin County, Kate Webber Punderson found a new calling after leaving her job as head of school at Carrabassett Valley Academy, a combination college-prep school and ski and snowboard academy for grades 7-12. Setting out to find a new job with purpose and a more flexible schedule, she took six months off to decompress, including a summer canoeing and mountain biking with her husband in the U.S. and Canadian Rockies. At home, she sorted through a 20-year paperwork backlog. After working with a career coach to plot her next move, as well as a resume coach and LinkedIn coach to fine-tune her profile, she landed a remote role with the National Interscholastic Cycling Association. “I was looking for an opportunity where I could make a difference but have a little more life-work balance so I could focus on my health and well-being and be able to do the things I like to do for a long time,” she says. As vice president for development, her responsibilities include overseeing marketing, communications and fundraising partnerships for a nonprofit that empowers youth through sport. She started the job in July 2024, 11 months after leaving her previous position. She’s found that working on West Coast time frees up mornings for exercise. She also stays active by skiing and walking Lizzie, a “cute little yellow mix” of a pooch adopted from a shelter.

Focused on longevity

For Andrea Cianchette Maker, there wasn’t much rest in the 17 months between her departure from Pierce Atwood and new role as president of FocusMaine, a private sector-led initiative she co-founded in 2014 to create quality jobs in strategic sectors. “My intention,” she says, “was to leave the practice of law and leave myself open to what comes next.” What came next, after more than a year of juggling family responsibilities and home projects, was a job opening at FocusMaine in summer 2023 when its then-president resigned two months before a major grant application was due. Maker, who had just started scouting out where to take golf lessons, changed course to step in as interim president. It became a permanent position that November. “FocusMaine is my fifth child, and this fifth child needed help,” she says. The 69-year-old has no plans to stop working anytime soon. Drawing inspiration from her mother who’s in her 90s and her late grandmother who lived to age 104, Maker fully expects further transitions in her own career. “I think I’m going to have a long life … and studying what I need to do to ensure my longevity,” she says.