Trading profit for passion: corporate women reinvent themselves--because they can.

• Author: Ryckman, Lisa
• Position: [career] WOMEN - Occupation overview

Leanna Clark leaves her house wearing a different hat depending on the day. In fact, there have been days--like this one--when she changes that hat three or four or even five times.

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At this moment, she's wearing her executive director of Philanthro Travel hat. Later today, she'll put on her senior vice president of communications for IMA Financial hat, and possibly her executive director of IMA's corporate foundation hat.

Later in the afternoon, she'll switch to her mom hat--attending a school play featuring her 7-year-old daughter, Larissa, and the season's final soccer game for Larissa's twin brother, Luke. During the game, she's back to the IMA hat with a conference call, then back to the mom hat, and finally--after the kids are in bed--one of her work hats again for an hour or so.

"It's worked out to be a very nice balance," says Clark, who spent more than 20 years as a hard-charging, 80-hour-a-week PR/marketing professional. "And I definitely see more of my kids."

Whether by design or by necessity, some women who have spent their careers on a traditional trajectory to the top--and have made it--are taking a moment to step back, reassess their careers and revise their priorities. In many cases, they are trading money for meaning and profit for passion; they're reinventing themselves, and they're not looking back.

"I think women of a certain age, when they get to be in their 50s, tend to want to embrace the softer things we all know women have but can't always explore with a corporate career," says Sharon Peters, who left her job as a newspaper executive three years ago. "Especially if they don't have three kids to put through college and a husband who doesn't work."

A recent study by the Center for Work-Life Policy found that at five top financial firms, twice as many women in top jobs as men were considering leaving their positions, and nearly 40 percent were looking at sector-switching, with nonprofit work one of their top choices.

Women are more than twice as likely as men to head a nonprofit, according to Daring to Lead 2006, a comprehensive national study of executive leadership at community-based nonprofits conducted by San Francisco-based CompassPoint Nonprofit Services.

Many of the women who make this transition were at a time in their careers where they have more options--something typically considered the purview of the 65-something retired CEO, who was usually a man.

"They may have some retirement...