Rachel joined Simon & Schuster in 2019 as Managing Director of the Children’s division following a decade at HarperCollins where she published bestsellers including Rob Biddulph, David Walliams, Anna James, Soman Chainani and Michael Bond. She started out in the children’s editorial team at Macmillan where the drudge of photocopying was offset by the joy of phone calls with legendary novelist Eva Ibbotson. At Simon & Schuster, Rachel leads the Children’s division publishing across all age groups and genres, and takes pride in offering authors and illustrators a nurturing and inspiring creative environment backed up with strong commercial ambition.

She sometimes commissions, mostly in the areas of middle grade and YA fiction, and her acquisitions at S&S include books by Ben Miller, Sophy Henn, Jenny Valentine, Katie & Kevin Tsang and Tracy Deonn. She loves big hooky concepts, narrative voice that leaps from the page, adventurous storylines, and books that leave young readers empowered, hopeful and eager to line up their next read. Rachel believes that connecting brilliant authors and illustrators with young readers is the best job in the world; she really is living her dream working in publishing.