About Mandy Farris Woods

Mandy is an author, seasoned operations executive, lifelong learner, world traveler, ancient coin enthusiast, and unapologetic pug person.

With more than two decades of leadership experience spanning investment banking, life sciences, healthcare, and the legal industry, Mandy has built her career around bringing clarity to complexity, helping organizations grow, and developing people. Her approach to leadership is grounded in the principles of servant leadership and a simple belief: leadership is ultimately about helping people, leaving things better than you found them, and doing the right thing even when it isn't the easiest thing.

Her professional accomplishments have earned recognition from the Los Angeles Business Journal, San Diego Business Journal, and Los Angeles Times, including recognition among the Los Angeles Business Journal's “Thriving in Their 40s,” selection as a finalist for the San Diego Business Journal Business Woman of the Year Awards, and being shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Inspirational Women Forum & Leadership Awards in both 2024 and 2025.

But work is only one part of Mandy's story.

She is a world traveler, an enthusiastic collector of ancient coins, artifacts, and antiques, and someone who will happily spend an unreasonable amount of time talking about pugs. She lives in San Diego with her husband, Noble, and their pugs, Rahllo and Dexter. She is the proud mother of Amanda and grandmother to Farris.

Her first memoir, You Can't Tell Me What to Do! A Memoir of Perseverance, Reinvention, and Becoming My Own, grew out of a desire to make sense of the experiences that shaped her, including motherhood, family, faith, abuse, career reinvention, illness, cancer, love, loss, and the sometimes uncomfortable process of changing your mind.

Mandy writes the way she tries to live: candidly, curiously, with humor, and with a healthy resistance to being told what she is supposed to think.