She spent her youth training to be a professional tennis player, but her athletic career was cut short when she contracted lyme disease in 1989, the summer before her junior year in high school.
After earning a BA, with honors, Goldberg continued her theatre education at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television where she completed an MFA in Directing in 1998.
[2] After receiving her degree, Goldberg served for five seasons as Artistic Associate at Arena Stage in Washington, D. C., where her directing credits include The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?, Proof, Book of Days, and On the Jump.
Included in that group is the 2010 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize Winner (Julia Cho's The Language Archive), two American Theatre Critics Association Citation Award Winning Plays (Lee Blessing's Great Falls and Deborah Zoe Laufer's End Days) and 2009 Pulitzer Prize Winner for Drama (Lynn Nottage's Ruined), written in part during Lynn's residency at the O'Neill in the summer of 2006.
Other critically acclaimed work developed at the O'Neill during Goldberg's tenure includes Adam Bock's The Receptionist, Rebecca Gilman's The Crown You're in With, Jason Grote's 1001 and Julia Cho's Durango.