Everyone has a story to tell and this is mine. I was born in a faraway place in the middle East – Tehran, Iran – before the revolution. If I told you what a modern country we had, you would just stare at me in disbelief! Iran is a beautiful and extraordinarily rich country. We had a very modern western lifestyle until the revolution, and I lived in Tehran, the capital. My parents came from different worlds.
My father was part of the Academia and very well known in Tehran as he was the first person to have a PHD in Electrical engineering. He went to school in the US and returned to Iran to found the Institute of Technology. He wrote eleven textbooks. The universities in Tehran still use these books today. He passed in the early 2000s. He was a progressive thinker; having completed his higher education in the US, he insisted that my brother and I do the same. Education was extremely important to him. Unbelievably, I went to an American school in Tehran where I learned English and French before the revolution.
My mother was from a well-known political family close to the Shah. After the revolution, because of my mother’s side of the family, we were banned from visiting Iran. It did not matter to me as I was always closer to my father’s side of the family. I later moved to Switzerland to live with my grandmother, which was like a second home to me. Afterward, I came to the US to finish high school and go to college. I graduated from Tufts University with a degree in Economics.
I started my career in Switzerland as an investment banker in the early nineties. That was the time of the leveraged buyouts and investment in junk bonds (high-yield bonds). It was an extremely exciting time from an economic and job market standpoint. I met my husband, a New Yorker, and a devout Yankees’ fan, in Zurich, Switzerland. We have been married for 35 years and have a 32-year-old son.
We moved back to the US in the nineties. Having been in investment banking, the return to the US job market was a rude awakening for me. I was competing with those who were CPAs or had master’s in business administration. I did not have any special license nor an advanced degree. I applied to everything, and then suddenly I got a call from a company that was a defense contractor. Having lived abroad, I did not know what a defense contractor meant, regardless, I got a job with Litton PRC in the mid-nineties in Finance. I started from the bottom and worked my way up. I also went to MBA school at night. After 7 years, I joined Lockheed Martin’s Global Treasury organization.
My US career took off with Lockheed. I joined Lockheed in April of 2001 and then 6 months later, 9/11 happened. It was a horrible time. Lockheed received from the government a ~$600M contract called Strategic Airport Security Rollout (SASR) to implement new airport security measures. I wanted to contribute and begged my manager to let me go work on SASR. At the time, I was a manager but gave up my title to go work on the SASR contract as a subcontract program manager. This was not in finance, but this position was one of the best opportunities I had at Lockheed. I met great operational folks that to this day, I am friends with. The contract took 9 months to complete. After this contract, I had incredible growth opportunities at Lockheed where I stayed for 16 years. In the summer of 2017, the Lockheed IT services and Leidos merged, and I went over to Leidos, where I stayed for 7 years.
Aside from my career, I have traveled extensively for business and personal reasons. I love diverse food, cultures, and languages. I speak Persian (Farsi), English, German, and French fluently. I have recently picked up Spanish which is not an easy language. I have always dreamed of having a Café/Wine bar somewhere in Europe, Spain, maybe? However, life has taken me in a different direction. I am happy to be part of the Invictus family today but who knows, someday, I may still open a wine bar somewhere in the world!