Our Team

Rachael was introduced to charter schools early in her career, when she headed to Memphis, Tennessee as a member of Teach For America in 2006. She taught sixth grade language arts at The Soulsville Charter School, during which time 94 percent of her students scored proficient or higher on the TCAP. Rachael moved to Columbus, Ohio and joined KIPP Journey Academy as a founding teacher. In 2011, she joined the team at The ASK Academy Charter School, a project-based STEM school in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, as a founding teacher in the middle school.

After four years at ASK, she began teaching middle school literacy at Cochiti Middle School, a rural, traditional public school. At Cochiti, her students have averaged 1.4 years of reading growth and a 1.845 value-added growth score on the PARCC assessment, earning her the distinction of Exemplary on the rigorous New Mexico teacher evaluation system. In addition to teaching, Rachael participated in the inaugural New Mexico Teacher Leader Network, a group of the state’s most effective teachers working to foster clearer means of communication between the Public Education Department and classroom teachers.

In 2017, Rachael was accepted into the highly competitive Building Excellent Schools fellowship, where she studied 30 of the country’s top charter schools, while writing the charter application for Solare Collegiate. In the summer of 2018, Solare Collegiate was approved by the New Mexico Public Education Commission, with the highest scoring application in PEC history. Following Solare Collegiate’s approval, Rachael was able to secure over a million dollars in startup funding for the school.