She earned a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from Brown University and a Ph.D. in neurobiology from The University of Chicago (1995). Following postdoctoral research at the University of Oregon (1995-97) and Columbia University (1997-2001), she joined the faculty at Stanford (2002). Goodman was named an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow (2002), Terman Fellow (2002), McKnight Fellow (2005), Klingenstein Fellow (2005) and awarded the Eppendorf & Science Prize in Neurobiology (2004).