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Uptown women can turn anything into a business opportunity — even their kids leaving the house.
When former Vogue exec Donna Korren, 61, watched her youngest daughter fly the coop for college, she realized it was a “perfect storm” of heartbreak and opportunity.
The moment moms finally regain their house and time, and suddenly ask, “Now what?”
For Korren, who now works in luxury brand strategy, the answer was simple: Start a social network for mothers who successfully launched their kids into elite colleges but forgot, at least for a while, to launch themselves.
She calls her business “Empty Quester.”
“I’ve always disliked the phrase ‘empty nester’ because it rings of lack,” Korren, who lives in Manhattan, told The Post. “It describes the end of a period in a parent’s life with nothing more than vacancy.”
To fill the void, she charges the club’s paid members a relatively low fee of $240 a year — less than the cost of a night out in a tony neighborhood — to organize two online group chats a month and occasional in-person ladies’ nights.
According to data, there may not be as many empty nesters as there used to be.
Nearly 33% of American adults under 35 still live with their parents, according to a 2025 survey. But that means 66% of grown kids have left the nest — leaving moms especially vulnerable to feeling lonely and even somewhat useless.
Gwen Mitrano, 53, was one of those women.
After selling her family home in Connecticut and moving back to her home city of Manhattan in 2022, she joined Empty Quester last year.
She told The Post, “I realized my only friends in the city were Pedro and Hiram” — the doormen in her Upper East Side co-op.
“Initially, the most surprising thing was how quiet our home was,” Mitrano, who sold her Connecticut home after her daughters left for college, said. “I kept expecting the front door to swing open to see my daughters and their friends coming and going.”
And while she loved the perks of sudden solitude — “It’s really nice not hearing the question, ‘What’s for dinner?’” — she realized they came with a new need to rebuild her social life, and redefine who she was beyond motherhood.
Mitrano tried stitch nights, oil painting, meditation and silk painting classes, but often found herself surrounded by people decades younger.
“The company was great, but by the time you’re 50, there’s a comfortable shorthand that comes with hanging out with people your own age,” she said. “I had a running joke with my husband that women in their 50s just don’t live in Manhattan.”
Ironically, it was Gen Z’s modern clubhouse, TikTok, that helped Mitrano discover Empty Quester.
Normally, Mitrano joked, she would have taken a “hard pass” on meeting up with a random group of strangers.
But knowing how rare it was to find like-minded women her own age, she took a leap of faith in her well-worn Manolos.
“I was pleasantly surprised to meet interesting women at a similar life intersection to mine,” she told The Post. “You can never underestimate the power of girlfriends.”
Beyond the in-person gatherings, Korren says Empty Quester members also get access to two virtual, expert-led Zoom meetups each month, plus Substack chats with fellow “questers.”
At one recent beauty event, members mingled, laughed and tried free skincare products — all carefully chosen by Korren in her growing role as a mid-life brand whisperer.
Other gatherings have included drinks, meals and even panel discussions about life beyond daily parenting.
Some moms are even getting a jump on empty nester status while their kids are still at home.
Mahwish Syed, 53, has a teen son still living at home. But the self-proclaimed “design goddess,” who runs an interior decorating firm in the East Village, told The Post she was “thirsty for that human connection and that level of sisterhood.”
As someone who “can’t wait for the next chapter” — when her child is successfully launched on a college campus — Syed was thrilled to find a built-in group of women who are already facing the post-teen parenting years.
“At this stage of life, you identify as a mom, but you’re so much more than that,” Syed said. “How do you actualize those parts of yourself that may have been put on hold?”
NYC-based psychotherapist Jordan Conrad says that struggle can be part of a much bigger identity shift.
“Becoming an empty nester is a bigger identity shift than many people expect,” Conrad told The Post.
Once the day-to-day structure of being a mother disappears, women can suddenly find themselves having to rebuild not only their routines, but their sense of who they are outside of parenthood.
“It can feel that your entire social life was simply a byproduct of your child’s life, and now you need to learn how to be around people again,” he said.
And, perhaps, a significant effect on Donna Korren’s second act as a post-parenting guru.
On TikTok, her bio now reads “empty nest expert,” and features categories like “college parenting 101” and “over 40 style.”
Her videos have been viewed almost a million times.
Conrad says the city is an ideal place to practice social skills and form connections as an empty nester.
“For that reason, one of the best things empty nesters can do to re-engage with themselves and develop their social lives is to find something that they are interested in — preferably something they don’t know that well – and do it with other people who are also interested in it,” Conrad said.
And for New Yorkers, he sees plenty of opportunity to start over.
“As centuries of people have found out, New York City is the ideal city to reinvent yourself,” Conrad said.
“There is no shortage of stimulation and, if you allow yourself to feel excited by those possibilities and expose yourself to novel experiences, it can have a significant effect on your brain.”
