President-elect Barack Obama ran as a post-boomer candidate, the one who could put behind the rancor of the 1968 generation that has long been divided not only by the Vietnam War but by the “culture war” and a host of other issues.

It’s true that Obama comes at such discussions with an approach that partly reflects that he was only 7 years old in that pivotal year.

But it’s not true that Obama is post-boomer. His birth year, 1961 was one of the peak birth years of the entire boom, with many more babies that year than in the early years of the baby boom, which began in 1946 and didn’t end until at least 1964.

The LA Times explores this issue in a nice piece of cultural anthropology that also makes the point that Obama is bringing in a lot of fellow late-boomers in their late 40s and early 50s.

“What am I waiting for?” Caroline Kennedy says she asked herself when she turned 50.

The New York Times’ Katharine Q. Seelye suggests that Kennedy’s sense of the passing of time is one of the motivations behind her decision to seek the U.S. Senate seat expected to be vacated by Hillary Clinton.

Boot camps that aim to “retire retirement,” vacations that let you try out dream careers and a new crop of life coaches are flourishing as boomers seek help making the transition to their encore careers.

“Sometimes a big turn in your life requires more concentration than we get on a daily basis,” Judy Goggin, vice president of Civic Ventures, told The Wall Street Journal. “The idea of going away for a week – and stepping out from your regular world – can be really appealing.”

Steve Lohr of The New York Times reports:

Harvard kicked off a small but ambitious experiment this week that it hopes will become a new “third stage” of university education. For the student-fellows in the program, most in their 50s and early 60s, the goal is a second-act career in a new stage of life.

The 14 fellows have résumés brimming with achievement — including a former astronaut, a former senior official at the United States Agency for International Development, a physician-entrepreneur from Texas, a former public utility official from California, a former health minister from Venezuela and a former computer executive from Switzerland.

They gathered at Harvard on Thursday to begin the yearlong program intended to help them learn how to be successful social entrepreneurs or leaders of nonprofit organizations focused on social problems like poverty, health, education and the environment. Their interests include sickle cell anemia, women’s education in Africa, health care quality and water conservation.

People pursuing encore careers are getting into trouble – in a good way.

The Encore Careers Summit at Stanford University marked a turning point in the emerging encore careers movement. Yes, encore careers match untapped talent with unmet needs.Yes, encore careers combine continued income, personal fulfillment and social impact. Yes, encore careers can produce bodies of work as, or more, significant than the careers they follow.

And yes, participants at the first-ever gathering of people in their encore careers set their sights even higher – a veritable encore uprising of innovation and experience to reverse the outmoded policies and systemic inequities that are hobbling our communities and our country.

Individuals and organizations pledged to sustain the momentum from the first-ever Encore Careers Summit this month, committing themselves to projects and plans to bring a windfall of human talent to bear on our generation’s most pressing challenges.

“We are going to do something extraordinary today,” Ruth Wooden declared at the start of the summit at Stanford University. “We are going to actually launch a movement.”

Wooden, president of Public Agenda and chair of Civic Ventures’ board of directors, challenged individuals to declare what they will do to advance the movement in 2009, and introduced 10 organizations with concrete plans to launch or expand encore programs.

"There’s a movement afoot, and our generation’s been a part of a lot of movements," says Sheila Moore of Chattanooga, Tenn. "I’m a younger baby boomer, so maybe I wasn’t on the vanguard of that one. But I have the opportunity to be on the vanguard of this one."

This short video, put together by the Mill Valley Film Group, provides a taste of the recent Encore Careers Summit at Stanford University, a gathering of hundreds of people in, or in support of, encore careers that combine social impact personal meaning and continued income in the second half of life.

In a rousing call to action at the Encore Careers Summit, Gara LaMarche (at left) urged older Americans to heed the call to service that was a hallmark of President-elect Barack Obama’s campaign as well as push for policy changes that will help launch encore careers. His speech is featured on the home page of The Huffington Post.

As president and CEO of The Atlantic Philanthropies, one of the few foundations focused on aging, and as a former leader with Human Rights Watch and other organizations working for positive social change, LaMarche has watched social activism ebb and flow in many countries.

“Make the most of this moment,” he told the audience. “Respond to the call of a new president when he asks what we can do for our country, a country in which many of us are happily surprised to find we take a newfound pride.

(We’re at the Encore Careers Summit at Stanford University. I’ll try to keep a running commentary going — read from the bottom.)

12:04: Levine wanted to defend the notion of a movement as “giving critical mass.” Also that the movement needs a voice, a place, like a magazine.

Denis Hayes came back to say that whether it’s a movement or not, he’s “wildly enthusiastic” about encore careers. He was more talking about the distinction between the enlightenment and the reformation. The reformation was a movement — “what’s going on here is more about a change in the way of thinking.”

Joe James (at left) was inspired by Martin Luther King, Jr., to create opportunities for black farmers in the South. Arlene Blum was outraged when she discovered the chemical that she had fought to have removed from children’s sleepwear was showing up in furniture. Watching his older son receive a law degree, Catalino Tapia was filled with an overwhelming desire to enable other children of Latino immigrants to go to college.

The six $100,000 winners of The Purpose Prize told of different paths to their world-changing roles as they accepted their awards on December 6, but their stories shared a common theme: All would stop at nothing in order to change the system.

“If you’re not making trouble out there, you’re not getting the job done,” said Mark Goldsmith, a former marketing executive who now coaches male inmates at Riker’s Island in skills needed for life after prison. Goldsmith recalled his surprise when a warden praised his efforts, saying, “We don’t know why they’re listening to a white man in a suit, but they’re listening to you.” They were listening to him, Goldsmith said, because “nobody ever talks to these young men.”