Last week I attended two events in New York, put on by the Forte Foundation. The Executive Roundtable and the Corporate Best Practices Summit were both focused on the issue of recruiting and retaining the next generation.  Both were lively (hey; when you get hundreds of talented, passionate women together lively is the least that can be said!) and certainly informative. But they were also sobering.

The ubiquitous Glass Ceiling that has plagued women for decades is being replaced by a Gray Ceiling of Baby Boomers. I'm one. There are roughly 76 million Boomers in America today. About half are women and three out of four are currently in the workforce. Retirement is not something we're even thinking about, much less doing. Having fought hard to gain a foothold in professions and getting joy (and a healthy pay check) from our work, we're not planning on leaving anytime soon!

But right behind us and already in the workforce are about 44 million Gen X'ers . And right behind them, just stepping into the world of work, are 80 million Millenials, and almost 70% of them are women and minorities.

According to Margaret Regan, President and CEO of Future Work Institute, during the next ten years more than 30 million jobs will be vacated and about 20 million will be created. So over 50 million jobs are going to be filled by....a group of very talented young people who are preparing for work differently, who value work differently and who really don't aspire to be like the folks in front of them.

To paraphrase the timeless cartoon line: we have seen the enemy and (gulp) it just may be us. We're now the ceiling that our young colleagues are going to have to break through. We're the faces of the traditional organizations and career paths that are bewildering and frustrating and even unsatisfying. With our passionate take-no-prisoners approach to work, we're the role models they are rejecting.

One of our challenge here at Babson and at the Center for Women's Leadership is to prepare and support our female---and male--- students (and our young female and male colleagues) for this new world of work. But the bigger challenge? Having the wisdom and generosity the just get out of their way.