Emily Pearl Goodstein does it all. The 38-year-old Washingtonian is a co-contributor to three books, mom to a 19-month-old, former owner of a photography business, board member of Fat Torah and the Jewish Democratic Council of America, and CEO and founder of Greater Good Strategy.
Can you give a brief overview of what you do?
The main thing I do professionally is run a digital marketing agency called Greater Good Strategy. We work primarily with non-profit organizations and many of our clients are Jewish organizations. We help organizations market themselves online and raise money online, whatever it takes for an organization to thrive online is probably something we can help with. We have a team of 60 consultants and a pretty amazing list of clients. The other part of my life that takes the most time is that I have a 19 month old baby. She’s really cute, her name is Edie and I consider Greater Good my first baby so it’s my second. I had a photography business and specialized in birth photography but unfortunately had to scale it down as it wasn’t really sustainable with everything going on in my life.
How did you come up with the idea of the Greater Good Strategy?
I quit my job working for someone else about seven years ago and took on a handful of solo consulting projects. I found out pretty early on that it would actually be a lot easier and I would be able to help customers more if I had a team of people I could collaborate with. Also, even though I think I can do everything, it turns out that I can’t and there are a lot of things that other people are better at than me. About four years ago I had the idea to start an agency and spent about eight months developing the concept, then Greater Good was launched about 3.5 years ago as an extension directly from my own independent consulting practice. Since then we have grown very quickly and I am more than proud of what we are doing.
How did you get into the books you worked on?
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Beth Kanter is at the heart of the book project. She is an author and a photographer and she has written a number of books and I had the chance to collaborate with her on three of them. The first two were cookbooks recreating dishes from different Washington restaurants. The third was hidden places in Washington called “No Access DC”. I took the photos for the books. I’m super proud of them. It was a total adventure. The first book was the first time I worked on any type of print publication. It was definitely a great learning experience. The third was completely different as we were going to hidden places in DC. We went under monuments which was remarkable, just discovering places all around where people don’t usually get to go. The place I will never forget is when we went to a parrot sanctuary in Poolesville and I found I was very scared of birds, which I hadn’t realized before. One of them kept landing on my camera backpack and showing talons which was intense.
My husband and I have the idea to do a book about dive bars, we would like to see that happen. The other idea we had was to do a book about buildings that used to be Pizza Huts, because they stand out so much. The last thing is that I love to cook, so maybe there’s a baking project somewhere.
What Jewish organizations do you belong to?
I am the very first Chairman of the Board of Fat Torah. The organization’s goal is to reduce or eliminate height discrimination in the Jewish community. I’ve personally had experiences in the Jewish community where an organization presents itself as being so welcoming but it’s not welcoming at all in terms of size or it assumes a level of capability that not everyone has not. We have just recruited our first class of board members. We are about to move into a strategic planning process and establish ourselves as much as possible.
The second organization, Jewish Democratic Council of America, I serve on the Next-Gen Council. This job is really to help raise funds for Jewish Democrats and to try to help people who have socially progressive values get elected. On the Next-Gen Board, we are a group of people who are a little more new to this type of advocacy and who work to raise awareness of what the organization does and to ensure that the space is inclusive for the votes of all voters. It’s funny! I’m relatively new, so I’m still learning how to do things, but it was exciting to see how the organization chooses candidates to endorse.
Do you have any advice for other working mothers?
We are those people who got pregnant before the pandemic started and our baby was born before vaccines were a thing. Needless to say, that wasn’t the way we hoped things would turn out at all. I have two tips: I ask permission when someone is pregnant if it’s OK to give them advice, and if they say yes, then the two tips I have are: Spend as many dollars as possible for a postpartum doula. The maximum number of hours possible is my recommendation. The second thing is to already have the Zoloft in your home. Don’t wait until the baby is born and you’re two months away and feeling postpartum depression anxiety. When you’re in a rush, it’s so hard to get the drugs. People don’t talk about it and that’s a very rational thing I think I’m doing.