For Independent Professionals Building Practice on Their Own Terms
Wisepreneurs Podcast

Kim Watty

Kim Watty Profile Photo

Co-Founder of The Main Act | Emeritus Professor | Life Design Advocate | Mentor

Kim Watty, PhD, GAICD, FCPA

Kim Watty is a 66-year-old trailblazer who transitioned from a 30-year career in higher education to co-founding The Main Act with her daughter, Prue, in 2024.

As an Emeritus Professor of Accounting, with a PhD, GAICD, and FCPA credentials, Kim held leadership roles at Deakin University, RMIT, and the University of Melbourne, specializing in management accounting and education research.

After stepping away from academia in 2019, she sought “something more,” leading to The Main Act—a venture empowering women 60+ to design purposeful post-career chapters using Stanford’s design-thinking principles, like the Dashboard and Life Log.

Kim’s Retirement by Design program, an 8-week course launching May 2025, fosters curiosity, community, and confidence through interactive masterclasses and accountability calls.

Passionate about mentoring, embracing uncertainty, and building cross-generational connections, Kim draws on her lifelong learning—evident in her embrace of mindfulness, Ikigai, and swimming Port Melbourne’s bay without a wetsuit—to inspire women to live intentionally.

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May 9, 2025

Kim Watty Retirement by Design: How Professional Women Plan Beyond Finances

Kim Watty is a 66-year-old Emeritus Professor of Accounting who spent 30 years at RMIT, the University of Melbourne, and Deakin University, teaching in Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Japan, and rising to Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Business and Law. She formally left academia in 2020 and spent the next few years looking for what she calls 'the more' — the thing she knew she wanted to do next but could not yet name. That thing turned out to be The Main Act, a business she co-founded with her daughter Pru. Their signature programme, Retirement by Design, is an eight-week online course for women aged roughly 45 to 78, built on the Stanford Life Design methodology developed by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans. The programme alternates content weeks with integration weeks, includes one-on-one accountability calls, and deliberately keeps cohorts small and Melbourne-based for now. Kim and Pru interview every applicant to ensure alignment with the core mindsets — curiosity, bias to action,…
Guest: Kim Watty