Golara Haghtalab is a Washington D.C.-based coach, author, and organization development specialist who works exclusively with immigrant professional women navigating career transitions, identity reinvention, and professional visibility in the United States. An Iranian-born professional with over a decade of experience building her career in the U.S., she developed a multidisciplinary background across the sciences, design, business strategy, and coaching , earning a Master's degree in Organization Development from American University and a Bachelor's degree from the University of Virginia.
Her professional background spans roles as a Business Designer at Accenture Song, Artist-in-Residence at UVA's Curry School of Education, and founder of a coaching and advisory practice serving immigrant professionals across the Washington D.C. metro area, Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Texas, Arizona, California, and Louisiana. She is the author of Immigrant: Courage Required (New Degree Press, 2021), a memoir about building professional identity in a new country.
Her coaching practice is grounded in one conviction: immigrant professional women are not behind. They bring a broader frame of reference, deeper resilience, and greater adaptability than almost anyone in the room. What they need is help translating those strengths into language their new world understands, and a strategy for making sure they are found by the people who need them most.
She coaches in English, holds working proficiency in Farsi, and has worked with women from Asia, Latin America, North Africa, and across the diaspora. She understands the particular exhaustion of striving for excellence in two cultures simultaneously, and has built her entire methodology around it.
Her approach is built on what she calls the Dual Reinvention Framework: the recognition that immigrating and pivoting professionally require the same core skill: the ability to rebuild your identity without losing yourself. Using this framework alongside Positive Intelligence (PQ) tools, she helps immigrant professional women stop translating themselves for their new world and start leading from who they have truly become.
PQ Coach & Grant Recipient.
Golara's coaching is grounded in the Positive Intelligence framework, a research-backed methodology
that strengthens mental fitness by quieting the inner critic and activating the positive intelligence
brain. As a grant recipient, she brings this framework to the women who need it most: immigrant professionals
navigating identity, career, and reinvention simultaneously.
M.S. Organization Development, American University, Washington D.C.
B.S. Chemistry & Studio Arts, University of Virginia
PQ Coach, Positive Intelligence Certified & Grant Recipient, Washington D.C.
Published Author, Immigrant: Courage Required (New Degree Press, 2021)
Artist-in-Residence & Instructor, Curry School of Education, University of Virginia
Business Designer, Accenture Song
Tom Tom Foundation Residency Recipient, Charlottesville, Virginia
Speaker, CreativeMornings, PVCC, University of Virginia, bookstore community events
Community, 40,000 Instagram followers in the Iranian and immigrant diaspora
