The throughline of Rachel’s 30+ year career in the nonprofit sector has been collaborative constituent engagement, and her superpower is crafting customized experiences that connect people and move organizations to greater impact.
Rachel grew up in Atlanta and started her career as a journalist, writing for Junior Scholastic and Business Atlanta magazines. Volunteering with teenagers during those years inspired her to unite teens from diverse backgrounds to create an outlet for youth voice in 1993, and Youth Communication /VOX Teen Newspaper (now VOX ATL) was born. After serving as the founding executive director for VOX ATL’s first two decades, Rachel worked with the board to manage an executive transition while reimagining her own role. As the organization’s mission director, Rachel applied her vast experience in youth development and nonprofit management to scale the organization’s impact through new strategic partnerships, pioneer a new earned revenue program, and advance VOX’s leadership in the field of youth development.
Rachel has consulted with many local and national nonprofits, including managing content for the national publication “Youth Today,” co-designing and co-facilitating multi-day learning communities with Boys & Girls Clubs of America and The Wallace Foundation. She has served as a trainer for Georgia’s ASYD Quality Standards since 2015, updating the curriculum in 2023 to include a focus on diversity and youth voice, and she has presented — most often with youth she has trained — at a variety of state and national conferences around a range of nonprofit management topics, including National Afterschool Association, National Summer Learning Association, Georgia State University’s MACIE teacher training program, and more.
As part of The Callahan Collaborative, Rachel brings her experience both as a long-time executive director and as someone who has served on multiple boards. She was the youngest person invited to serve on the boards of the Atlanta Women’s Foundation and Georgia Center for Nonprofits (then the GA Nonprofit Resource Center) and has served on the advisory board of Kate’s Club and leadership team of the Georgia Statewide Afterschool Network. And she was delighted to put her journalistic skills to work editing Roadmap for Education Foundations, a book written by TCC colleagues Robin Callahan and Gail Rothman.
Rachel earned a bachelor’s in journalism from the University of Texas/Austin and a master’s degree in social work from University of Georgia. She has completed multiple nonprofit executive and facilitator training courses. She lives in Atlanta with her family and believes fundamentally in the power of constituent voices to transform people, programs and communities.