Career Path Of An Investor At Golden Gate Investments

Sure. I actually started working when I was 13. My mom had a baby shop where she sold baby clothes, so I used to work there. Then I worked at the neighbor's sporting goods store. In college, I worked at a bank and through all of college, I actually had internships.

I flew out to DC and had an internship with the World Bank. Actually, I take that back. I started as a temp at the World Bank during college. That gave me a lot of exposure to the possibility of working in international development, which is what I studied in undergrad. I studied the political economy of industrial societies and initially, I thought I wanted to get into international development.

I found a way to get a temporary job at the World Bank. That was really fruitful. During my time there as a temp, I used it as an opportunity to have probably 50 or 60 informational interviews with anyone I could find who would talk to me. They had no idea; they just saw me as a clueless college kid trying to figure out her way in the world, and they were always happy to talk.

I highly recommend informational interviews to people in college to give them an opportunity to see what other careers are like. Through the informational interviews, I realized that even people well-established in their careers in their forties and fifties, when I asked them how they chose their career path, would often say they were still figuring it out. It was humbling to realize that it's always a work in progress; we're always trying to figure out our next step.

Through the informational interviews, I became aware that I needed a graduate degree because everyone I spoke to had advanced degrees. After I left college, I went to DC and worked at the World Bank. I got a full-time job there through the connections I made during my temporary work. I worked there for two years.

During that time, I applied to business school and went back to get my MBA with an international program, focusing on finance and strategic planning along with international management. I thought I wanted to do international business. This was when NAFTA was going on in 1994. Then the Mexican peso crashed, which kind of ruined things.

My career trajectory led me to Wall Street for a brief period, about a year, before the peso crash. I learned all about equity as a Latin American equity analyst and how analysts do their jobs on Wall Street. It was interesting, but I learned I didn't like Wall Street, the stock market, or New York.

I went back to UCLA to look at job opportunities and found a job at Disney in finance. I wanted to get back to California. I worked at Disney in finance for two years until I got a promotion and a higher-paying job at Fox. I worked there for two years, and then Lucasfilm recruited me in the Bay Area. They relocated me because I wanted to be closer to my family.

I was good at finance and very detail-oriented. However, as much as I was good at it, I really didn't like it. I'm a creative person and felt like my creativity was being stifled. After a year and a half, almost two years at Lucasfilm, I left the corporate world.

I went to Turkey and met someone who gave me a completely different perspective on life. He had his own retail shop there. We came back home and opened a retail shop in San Francisco, importing Turkish rugs and things from around the world. I loved being my own boss, not dealing with corporate politics, and using my creativity.

I loved being able to use many of the skills I developed getting my MBA in marketing, like developing my own website. As an entrepreneur, you wear so many hats. I didn't love not making a lot of money, especially during the dot-com bust in 2000, but we were making ends meet.

My sister had gotten into real estate and was making a lot of money. She didn't have an MBA or go to Berkeley. This was the heyday of real estate in the early 2000s. I wanted to purchase real estate, but I didn't trust any realtors. I decided to get my own license to represent myself and purchase my first property in San Francisco.

Once I got my license, many friends wanted to use me because they also didn't trust realtors. It was easy to get clients because everyone trusted me; they knew I was analytical, trustworthy, and a hard worker. It was super easy to launch my career.

It was also the right time. I was in my mid-thirties, as were all my friends, and we were all able to have a down payment to purchase our first condo in the city. That's how I got into real estate, and I loved it because it was tangible and something I understood. Unlike the stock market, which isn't based on discounted cash flow or SWOT analysis as taught in business school, real estate is grounded.

I don't like the stock market; it's not my thing. My thing is more real estate and then venture capital. Launching my real estate career in my mid-thirties was super easy, though a lot of work and highly competitive in San Francisco. I did that for about 10 years; it was a grind and could be lonely if you work by yourself.

For the next 10 years, I looked for something more intellectually stimulating where I could give back to the community. About four and a half years ago, I met the founder of Portfolio, a VC firm that tries to democratize venture capital. They allow for much smaller check sizes and focus on underserved markets, mainly female founders, people of color, or any underserved markets.

It's a really amazing company. I've become passionate about activating women's wealth and also men's wealth, targeted at investing in underserved markets. About half of the people I've inspired to invest in venture capital through Portfolio have been men, and many have been women as well. It's a wonderful community investing in products and services overlooked by typical VC firms.