Author, speaker, and Age Wave co-founder Maddy Dychtwald is a leading expert on the changing demographic trends—both generation- and gender-related—shaping the marketplace, the workplace, and our lives.

Dychtwald has spent more than 25 years investigating and forecasting lifestyle and market trends of older adults and the 79 million baby boomers. Building on this knowledge, she has recently emerged as a renowned authority on the rising economic influence of women and their impact on industries, ranging from financial services and healthcare to consumer marketing.

A high-impact speaker, she has addressed more than 300,000 business and social service leaders worldwide for organizations such as Blue Cross of California, Chevron, Direct Marketing Association, Fidelity Investments, Lincoln Financial, LPL Financial, Global Women Leadership Network, MasterCard, National Association of Educators, Network of Executive Women, and the World Future Society. Dychtwald has been regularly featured in prominent media worldwide, including Bloomberg Businessweek, Forbes, Newsweek, TIME, US News & World Report, Fox Business News, CNBC, and NPR. She is also a popular contributor to The Huffington Post and ThirdAge.com.

Her newest book, Influence: How Women's Soaring Economic Power Will Transform Our World for the Better (2010), explores how women are the major change agent of the decade to come. Dychtwald also wrote Cycles: How We Will Live, Work, and Buy (2004), the winner of the 2004 Book of the Year Award from the National Community Colleges Association, and co-authored an illustrated children's book on personal reinvention entitled Gideon's Dream: A Tale of New Beginnings (2008).

Maddy Dychtwald co-founded Age Wave, the nation's foremost thought leader on population aging trends and their profound business, lifestyle, and cultural implications. The company provides breakthrough research, award-winning communications, and results-driven marketing and consulting initiatives to more than half of the Fortune 500.