As an experienced design leader, Rachel provides creative, editorial, and operational guidance on a fractional basis. With expertise building brands from scratch and eighteen years at major media and tech companies, she’s an ideal thought partner for organizations of all sizes. Rachel requires minimal onboarding and has helped agencies not only win pitches but scope out the project and oversee the execution. In the realm of good, fast, and cheap design, Rachel appreciates constraints and merges strategic intuition with high craft. She was recently embedded on Airbnb’s Marcom team.

As a design systems expert, Rachel helps brands retain their integrity in a world demanding disruption. Blending creative vision with pragmatism, she adapts to fast-paced, budget-conscious projects — from launch campaigns and digital experiences to book covers and film posters. She believes all projects require a mini immersion discovery phase, enabling visuals to transcend mere looks to become vehicular: propelling concepts and guiding understanding. A strategist at heart, Rachel delivers distinct identities, including guidelines as well as motion and sonic dimensions.

Rachel approaches digital experiences the way a good editor approaches a publication: with a clear point of view, a defined user in mind, and an eye for what makes people stay. Methodical by nature, her process begins with a discovery phase — stakeholder interviews, audits, and taxonomy — before moving into product vision, wireframes, and high-fidelity UI prototypes. Though not a traditional UX practitioner, she has led digital engagements across nonprofits and luxury publishers — most recently tapped by Pentagram London to lead the UX for a new arts institution’s digital destination.

Though Rachel observes her clients’ cultures from the outside, she is capable of driving meaningful change within organizations. With more distributed-first and hybrid models, investing in culture beyond the office walls is more critical than ever. She shapes equitable employee experiences through storytelling and believes that you don’t manage the creative process, you enable it. On the structural side, Rachel “designs” how people work — determining optimal team configurations, whether building from scratch (0 to 1) or evolving teams for what comes next.

Rachel treats social media as a storytelling medium rather than a distribution channel. Her engagements begin with an audit and end with a cohesive visual system: a social identity, image library, and content playbook. She approaches these projects with an art direction and photo research sensibility, curating visual banks clients can draw from long after the engagement ends. Recent work includes the social strategy and visual approach for Starbucks’ Instagram (via Conscious Minds) and scaling Netflix’s @abstractdesign for the promotion of Season 2 to 100K+ followers in under 90 days.

Rachel is passionate about crafting innovative educational experiences and empowering individuals to navigate evolving career models. She has designed curricula for institutions including the SVA, CCA, and The School of The New York Times. With new work models reshaping how people define success, her experience as a longtime hiring manager translates into practical coaching — from negotiating rates to optimizing resumes and stepping into management. Rachel adeptly adapts semester-long courses into workshops and coaches professionals at every stage.