Rachel Owens

Hometown: Palo Alto, CA

Major: Data Science and Social Systems

Three things I love to do at Stanford outside of class: Sunset picnics in the Santa Cruz mountains, weekend trips somewhere you shouldn’t be going on a weekend, and spending time with my people!

I could talk all day about: Finding balance, what it means to be present or experience awe, climbing!, mountaineering, photography, filmmaking, democracy, how the US interacts with the rest of the world, and who is in the room when decisions are made

I would love to connect with guests who work in fields related to: Government, private public partnerships, data science, political think tanks or consulting, foreign service, international collaboration

Biosketch: Rachel is ohhh so incredibly stoked for her first summer on Staph, and even more stoked that she’ll get to hang out with her little brother allll summer long (which he is, of course, equally as excited about). When not being the best big sister to ever exist, Rachel enjoys doing things that scare her (something silly about expanding her comfort zone). These endeavors include anything from rock climbing and mountaineering to solo travel. The most important thing in the world to Rachel though is most definitely people. She’s most happy outside and with those she cares about. She believes very strongly that we only have one short little existence, and that it is incredibly important to be intentional with how you spend that time, and present wherever you end up. On campus, Rachel is studying Data Science and Social Systems with a focus in Democracy and Governance, and has just started writing an honors thesis for the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. She’s quite interested in how bridging the interdisciplinary gap between data science and social issues might help accelerate finding solutions.