Donna Haghighat

Donna Haghighat, CEO and founder of Shoptimize grew up in Connecticut and trained as a lawyer at The University of Connecticut School of Law. Donna doomed herself to 12 years of practicing tax law for the State of CT’s Department of Revenue when she responded to questions about what she wanted to do when she graduated law school with this response: “I don’t know, anything but tax law.” She now calls herself a recovering lawyer and has reawakened her passion for women’s advancement which originally lead to a minor in women's studies while studying at Trinity College where she majored in economics and first honed her entrepreneurial skills devising a Trinopoly T-shirt fundraiser and creating a spoof of beauty pageants: The Mr. Student Body Contest.

Having been in the leadership ranks of two women's funds and a networking force within them, Donna knows what matters to women and where women are lagging behind.  Her creative thinking has inspired innovative programs and alliances.

Donna lived in the UK for three years and The Netherlands for six months. She loves to travel and speaks Farsi, French, and Spanish fluently and knows just enough Italian and Dutch to be dangerous.

Donna’s deep passion for advancing women is rooted in the pride she takes in her mother, Parvaneh, who, after being married at 16 in Iran, had to sneak behind her grandfather's back to attend high school.  Her mother’s father did not see the need for a married woman to continue her education and said she could attend sewing school instead.  Donna’s mom quietly continued at high school, not sewing school, until her aunt encountered her on the bus coming from the high school and confronted her.  When her grandfather learned of Parvaneh's deceipt, he was angry, but ultimately allowed her to finish high school.  It was clear how much she wanted that education. 

When Donna’s mom moved to the US, her thirst for education went with her and she enrolled part-time in college when Donna and her twin sister Diane went to kindergarten, finally earning her college degree when the twins were in 9th grade.

Donna launched Shoptimize in April 2011 and is the proud recipient of the Barney School of Business, University of Hartford’s International Business Plan Competition for Shoptimize.