Issue 05 Launch Recap

Words can’t express my gratitude to The Verge for hosting our Issue 05 launch.

I continue to be blown away by the way former honorees come together to make other honorees feel special. Kristen Garcia pulled out all the stops to make this event special and countless honorees volunteered their time and talents to bring these women together. My thoughts on our fifth issue, which is specifically dedicated to women over 50:

Five years ago, when this magazine was just a fragile, hopeful idea, I felt certain of one thing: we were losing sight of what actually matters. Everywhere I looked, people were being measured by their accomplishments like titles, followers and shiny résumés while the deeper stuff was being quietly ignored.

So we started Hundred as an antidote. A small rebellion. A reminder that character is not only worth celebrating, it’s the glue holding this whole wild world together.

And now here we are, half a decade later, honoring 50 women over 50, which feels like our most important issue yet — maybe even our bravest. Because let’s be honest: Western culture has the attention span of a toddler in a candy aisle, and it likes its inspiration young, photogenic and “promising.”

Meanwhile, actual grown women — women with wrinkles earned from laughing and worrying and surviving — have somehow become invisible. You can see it in the data: most people over 50 say they’ve experienced age bias at work. Most experience “everyday ageism” in the form of jokes, assumptions or quiet dismissals that land like little paper cuts. It’s everywhere. 

So yes, highlighting women over 50 is, in its own way, a protest.

Because these women? They are powerhouses. They’ve lived through births, deaths, heartbreaks, reinventions, bad hair decades, spiritual detours, and at least one questionable relationship. They have failed spectacularly and risen anyway. They have learned to let go of things that don’t matter — perfection, approval, pretending — and hold tight to things that do.

They are funny. And wise. And honest in the way only people who have nothing left to prove can be.

Inside these pages, you’ll find women writing their most meaningful chapters — not the beginning, not the end, but the rich, complicated, beautiful middle. Women who have stories worth sitting down for. Stories that might shift something in you. Stories that could teach you how to live with more courage, more grace, or at least a little more sanity.

My hope is that you read every interview like you’re sitting across from a beloved aunt or mentor who finally tells you the truth about how to navigate this life without losing your soul. These women aren’t trying to impress you. They’re offering something better: themselves.

Thank you for celebrating them with us. And thank you for helping us push back gently and defiantly against a culture that forgot the obvious: aging is not a decline, but an unfolding. A gathering of wisdom, depth, humor, grit and tenderness.

And if we’re lucky, we get to become women like these.

-Hannah Schmitt, Publisher