Business address gone, ambition intact

Ariel Goodman breaks her New York stride just long enough to flick through a rack of T-shirts, two for $15, at a downtown sidewalk sale.

Wearing jeans, she shifts the cloth saddlebag that's slung over her shoulder, then merges back into lower Manhattan's throng.

Ms. Goodman – the mid-30s head of her own investment-advisory service and president of a small mutual fund – hasn't worn a suit in almost a year.

On this late-summer Tuesday she'll hit a string of government and private agencies, gathering forms for assistance. She knows the route well. By evening, her bag will be heavy.

A new workday wardrobe and routine are only the most apparent of the changes the past year has brought her. Goodman worked in the World Trade Center, and lived in its shadow.

Like many of Sept. 11's small-business survivors, she remains bent on recovery. Like a handful, she is balancing her personal and professional comeback with a heaping measure of advocacy for others who struggle.

"I'm angry now," she says. "And I think that serves me better than being sad or scarred."

* * *

Few published tenant lists reflect the true makeup of the Trade Center's workforce. Hundreds of low-profile businesses, many subletting from primary leaseholders, inhabited pockets of space among the satellites and subsidiaries of giant multinational firms. Tenants of the towers occupied real estate equal to twice the office space of downtown Albany.

Some were providers of basic services, locksmiths and shoe-repair shops clustered on the concourse. Higher up sat firms like Goodman's, filling arcane but important niches.

"On my floor there were easily 20 companies," Goodman says. "Every door had multiple signs on it."

They had in common a Zip Code exclusive to the towers – and skyward-straining ambition.

On Sept. 11, Goodman figures she was about six months away from her dream. She'd won a contract that summer to handle the back-office work of another mutual fund. The job would have grossed her more than $300,000 a year, her biggest contract by far, and it had her thinking seriously about finally going mobile – keeping a staffed office in the Trade Center but running it largely by laptop. "Probably from some island," she says. "Especially in the winter."

One year later, most thoughts of leisure have been shelved. "I used to visit friends, I used to have great dinners, I used to go to the gym," Goodman says.

Her main occupation now: mopping up from the day her world collapsed. "You know, I would say it's my whole day, every day. I spend just a few hours a day doing real work," Goodman says. "You're always looking for some receipt no one can give you. You're always fighting for something.

"I feel like I'm 18," she says, "and not an authority figure."

* * *

Goodman's fight for credibility began early. Intrigued by an uncle who owned a seat on the New York Stock Exchange, she'd often prod him about his work.

"He would always say to me: 'It's much too complicated for a little girl to understand,' " recalls Goodman, whose resolve to know only deepened.

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