Rachel leads a critical half of Basis Set, our engineering team, dedicated to building Pascal.
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Rachel studied Statistics and Physical Computing at Carnegie Mellon, where she became fascinated by data’s power to shape real-world decisions and the art of prototyping (experimenting with Arduinos, 3D printers, laser cutters, CAD tools, and VR). Her passion for creating systems from the ground up led her to join a startup, Mimosa Networks (acquired by Airspan), where she was the second data analytics hire. Before joining Basis Set, she partnered with early stage founders at Playground Global, an $800M venture firm.
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Rachel grew up in the Bay Area as the child of a San Francisco-native father and an immigrant mother from Hong Kong. Her family owned and operated a Chinese restaurant in Oakland, The Phoenix, where she spent much of her childhood. Watching her family create and grow their small business into a local institution over two decades taught her the value of hard work, perseverance, and the relentless drive needed to pursue a vision. Rachel’s intense drive also stems from a diverse athletic background in ice skating, swimming, and water polo — sports requiring distinctly different skills. She channels her innate competitive spirit into every endeavor, and as co-captain of the water polo team, her leadership propelled the team to their first-ever California Central Coast championship in Gunn High School’s history.