Arts Leader, Advocate & Educator

Rachel has served as a leader in the American Theatre both professionally and academically for decades.

In running her own theatre company, Ripe Time, for over 20 years, Rachel has deep experience in non-profit management, producing and fundraising from private foundations, state, city and national funding bodies and individual donors. She has been a fierce advocate for women in leadership positions in the American Theatre and dedicated her artistic career to creating performance by, with  and about female-identifying bodies about personal and political agency.

Rachel is a lifelong educator. She serves as Associate Professor and Chair of the Theatre and Performance Program at Purchase College, SUNY where she oversees department curriculum and BA program mainstage season curation. She teaches directing, devising and embodied performance as well as directing undergraduate productions that focus exclusively on the work of women, non-binary and trans playwrights. 

Before receiving tenure at Purchase College, SUNY, Rachel taught and mentored students at Fordham, the New School, and Lincoln Center Education as a core teaching artist for 10 years. From 2007-09, she co-created and ran an afterschool film education program for high school students at the Film Society of Lincoln Center. She designed curriculum, hired and trained a roster of teaching artists and worked with half a dozen NYC High Schools to pilot the program. She has led dialogues at the Theatre Communications Group national conference and been an invited speaker and workshop leader at Villanova, NYU Experimental Theatre Wing, Yale School of Drama and University of Pennsylvania.