Women Give San Diego’s December Update Featuring Katy Goshtasbi

Katy is honored to be the featured member of Women Give San Diego (WGSD). A charitable giving circle, of which she was a founding member, many years ago. WGSD provides grants to women and children’s charities in San Diego County. To learn more, please go to www.wgsd.org. In 2019, where can you become more philanthropic and donate more of your time and attention to supporting others? It’s not only great for your brand, it feels good.
 

Below is the feature:

 
What would you do if your education, focus, and experience in your chosen career just left you empty after 14 years? What if that career involved becoming a lawyer, lobbyist, being a regulator at the Securities and Exchange Commission, and learning all about wine and cigars by hobnobbing with old men who were key clients of prestigious law firms? This is a career that many of us would be thrilled to have. Powerful, exciting, influential: “meh”, says Katy Goshtasbi, a member of WGSD since the beginning.
 
Katy went to a Shakti Rising event where one of our founders, Gayle Tauber, was on the panel. Katy asked such good questions that she and Gayle became friends, and Gayle became her mentor. Along the way Katy naturally joined WGSD. This personal reach is what defines so many of the members of our organization. We are so fortunate to have women that are curious, compassionate, and many times, fearless in their journey.
 
Katy and her family left Iran when the coup occurred. She was six and thought they would be away from home for two weeks. She has not returned. Her uncles lived in Indiana so that is where Katy lived and went to school, including law school. It was a great place to grow up.
 
Katy chose law for two reasons: She wanted to make the world better; and she assumed that if she were a lawyer, she would be liked better as she was an immigrant. She clearly had not been fed a diet of lawyer jokes growing up! Her interest in securities law meant she headed for Washington DC. She spent years in DC in the securities field as a lobbyist, and a lawyer at the SEC. She met with Bernie Madoff among other “old men” in the field. She left the SEC to go to a law firm to help large brokers and hedge fund moguls create and spin off various companies. Her peers kept asking her how she was able to climb the ladder to the rarified air she worked in. She’d take them to lunch and tell them what she did. Looking back on it, she says she was dispensing lessons on branding yourself.
 
Unfortunately, her father was suffering ill health, so she chucked the east coast life in the fast lane for Newport Beach to be close to him. She joined a firm as an in-house lawyer, climbing that ladder until one night at 9 PM, just leaving her office, she discovered a vital piece of her puzzle. She had spent 15 hours that day drafting a small piece of a mutual fund prospectus. She went home that night, opened her own mailbox and by coincidence received a prospectus, and she tossed it because nobody reads those things. She asked herself, “What if my career and all I do in it is not meaningful to me?” Her fiancé, a dentist in San Diego, that she only saw on the weekends, sensed her unease and cautioned her to watch out or “you might blow up.”
 
And that is exactly what she did! She blew up the career that was not doing what she intended and started another one. Katy moved to San Diego and took a three-hour class at a community college led by a brilliant man teaching the concept of finding what you are naturally good at and then setting yourself up to enjoy your life doing what you do best. Katy felt a bit pathetic bailing out of law, and she did not see what her natural skills were. The course and her very patient teacher showed Katy that she is very good with the left and right sides of her brain. She is analytical and very creative with equal facility in both areas.
 
She has “rebranded” herself to take advantage of those skills by helping companies and leaders in those companies to grow and manage change. She created Puris Consulting over 10 years ago. If you want an education, spend some time on her site (www.purisconsulting.com). She spends lots of time with the employees of client businesses and companies because she must bring humanity along with the actual changes needed by companies. Katy has an inherent understanding of the phrase, “hurt people hurt people.” Her goal is to be of support so that humanity can help heal and that helps everyone. Katy is also working on creating a non-profit that focuses on three unloved and unwanted groups:

• Kids aging out of foster care
• Senior Citizens
• Senior Dogs

Katy sees no reason to retire because she is doing exactly what she loves doing. We are blessed to have her as a mentor and role model for all of us.