While getting her bachelor's degree in English at UC Berkeley, Rachael got hooked on public radio at the campus station, KALX-FM. After hosting and co-producing "Film Close-Ups," a radio magazine on Bay Area film, she returned to UC Berkeley for a graduate degree in journalism.

She landed her first job as a producer with Marketplace Radio in Los Angeles, and by the time she left, four years later, Rachael was an all-purpose editor, reporter and fill-in host for Marketplace and the Marketplace Morning Report. At Marketplace, she was part of the team that won a Peabody in 2000 for general excellence in radio broadcasting as well as a Bronze Medal from the 1998 New York Festivals International Radio Programming & Promotion Awards, for "Berlin Week," broadcast on the 25th anniversary of the Marshall Plan.

Rachael then spent six years reporting full-time for KPCC-FM in Los Angeles. She's covered the religious passion of LA's Korean-American Christians, the explosive growth of trade through Southern California's ports, and, of course, plenty of wildfires. Rachael's work has won her awards from the LA Press Club, the Radio and Television News Association, the Associated Press Television-Radio Association of California & Nevada and the Radio-Television News Directors Association of Southern California. She also freelances on occasion for National Public Radio.

Outside of the studio, you'll find Rachael watching old movies at the Castro Theatre, exploring the ethnic eateries of San Francisco, and doggedly trying to catch up reading all The New Yorker magazines piled up by her couch.