Rachel is extremely proud to be part of the Gunderman Group, where her love of human connection, care, and her beloved clients can really shine. Combining strategy and intelligence with a deep sense of ethics and of the bigger picture, Rachel’s stellar real estate record speaks for itself, with sales that increase substantially year after year. Rachel is passionate about helping people into their next life chapter, whatever that may look like, and doing it with equanimity and ease.
Rachel’s life itself has had many chapters. Though she spent her childhood in New York’s beautiful Hudson River Valley, she now considers herself a bonafide Californian, having lived in the Bay Area since 1999. In 2008, following several years of research, Rachel founded her artisan jam company, Blue Chair Fruit, an exhilarating and life-changing endeavor that challenged her in every conceivable way. The first of her three highly regarded cookbooks, The Blue Chair Jam Cookbook, was published and nominated for a James Beard Award in 2010. Rachel’s roles in her business included author, owner, jam maker, manager, mentor, art director, editor, branding wizard, teacher, and face of the business, appearing on Martha Stewart and in countless publications. Rachel continues to offer jam-making classes at Preserved in Oakland.
Rachel eventually hungered for something new, and real estate called to her. After spending the first year and a half of her real-estate career as the Gunderman Group’s marketing manager, she achieved her dream of being an agent on our team. She has never looked back.
In her early days, Rachel studied art through Pratt Institute in Tuscany, worked as an HIV test counselor in San Francisco, did musicology research at the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, and spent a year studying French literature at the Sorbonne. She holds a degree in French Studies from Smith College. Nowadays, in her spare time, Rachel can be found spending time with her husband and friends, cooking and baking, hiking and biking, doing classical Pilates, keeping up with her French, reading, tending to her burgeoning fruit orchard, or snuggling with her three rescue dogs. She lives with her husband and beloved partner of 18 years, Mark, in a beautiful 1928 home in the Oakland Hills.
