Your Next Season: Advice for Executives on Transitioning from Intense Careers to Fulfilling Next Seasons

Fully dedicated to current career—check. Succession activities in progress—check. Financial planning underway—check. Retirement real estate books on the nightstand—check. But what exactly will you do after you leave your main-stage corporate career? And how will you get started?

If you feel trepidation about retirement, or about what you will do next, you are not alone. Your Next Season brings you candid, unvarnished, authentic advice from hundreds of executives, who understand that the transition of “seasons” for an executive is one of the most fragile phases of adult life. Take comfort in this extraordinary book, which brings you companionship, empathy, encouragement, and sage advice—plus valuable tools to create your own purposeful and fulfilling Next Season.

Remember, regardless of what you do next, you are taking along the very best part of your career…YOU!

Dr. Leslie Wilk Braksick is co-founder of My Next Season, a company that advises executives as they transition from intense corporate careers to new life seasons anchored in purpose. After her 21-year career at CLG—a management consultancy she co-founded and led—Leslie moved on to launch My Next Season with business partner Mark Linsz. Creating this company was a natural step as Leslie’s career has been defined by C-suite executive coaching and succession advising. She saw an unmet need in a population she intimately understood.

Your Next Season is Leslie’s fourth book. Her first—Unlock Behavior, Unleash Profits—was a Wall Street Journal Business Best Seller. Another book—Preparing CEOs for Success: What I Wish I Knew—was hailed as a breakthrough guide to first-time CEOs. She writes monthly for Smart Business Magazine.

Leslie currently sits on the boards of Princeton Theological Seminary and Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh. She received a doctorate in Applied Behavior Analysis and a master’s in Industrial Psychology from Western Michigan University. More recently, she earned a master’s in Public Health from Johns Hopkins University. Leslie and husband Matthew, married 25 years, are the parents of Austin and Madeleine and reside in a suburb of Pittsburgh, PA.

Dr. William R. K. Innes met Leslie in 1999 when she provided post-merger executive advising to ExxonMobil leaders. His long ExxonMobil career included leading their Canadian chemical/petroleum business and European chemical business, and serving as CEO of Exxon in Japan. He retired as President of ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Company, responsible for corporate research and research-engineering-capital project management supporting the company’s 44 refining and marketing businesses worldwide.

Bill began his own Next Season by joining Leslie at CLG as a board member and executive advisor to C-suite leaders in Europe, India, and North America, who were navigating leadership transitions, major business challenges, and large-scale change. He also served as a director of Imperial Oil, Esso Sekiyu, Tonen Corporation, and Interprovincial Pipelines, and was Canadian Petroleum Products Institute President and a Liberty Science Center Trustee.

Bill and Judy, married 50 years, live on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, near son Rob and his family, where they enjoy their Next Season, boating in the beauty of the Pacific Northwest.