COVID-19 has been strenuous on states, their programs and their people. In previous blogs, we have mentioned P-EBT and our role in researching how states implemented it in such a short time period, something that caught the eye of President-Elect Joe Biden’s transition team, whom we had a COVID-friendly Zoom meeting with earlier this month.

As proud as we are of our team, we would not have been able to do any of this work without the help of our amazing partner, Rachel Cahill. She played a key role in state research and was incredibly valuable for offering her advocate perspective. Additionally, she was a huge help during our meeting with President-Elect Joe Biden’s transition team.

Rachel graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a major in History and Peace Studies. She then moved on to the Greater Philadelphia Coalition Against Hunger (GPCAH) and went on to start running the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) outreach campaign; SNAP has been a part of her life ever since. Once she started engaging in more direct outreach, she discovered many of the barriers that prevented people from receiving benefits, so she turned to policy work in order to try and help break those barriers down.

“The most I learned from advocacy were from mothers with young children who had to learn to navigate these programs’ benefits.” - Rachel

A large non-profit gig in Philadelphia that handled enrollment services boosted Rachel to national-level work. That boost allowed her to move to Ohio, start Rachel Cahill Consulting in 2017, and influence national-level work while still advocating for local issues.

Rachel has followed Alicia and Kone Consulting since Alicia worked on the Work Support Strategies initiative with the Center on Budget Policy Priorities (CBPP).

“I was doing administrative advocacy from the outside in when Alicia was doing it from the inside out. I was impressed with the outcomes of the project and after I began consulting, I had conversations with her on how to run my own consulting gig.” - Rachel

She gives Alicia’s business process improvement some credit for helping her network in Ohio successfully with her new company.

“P-EBT was exciting because we were doing something cutting edge and we don’t get a lot of chances to document a program that is happening as you are researching it. It was awesome to have Alicia's team as support on this project and we all have different strengths. I enjoyed learning about everyone and how we are dealing with COVID while we all were on an intensive timeline which was the most difficult part. All things considered, I think the teams stepped up because of the high stakes and delivered a product that was well put together.” - Rachel

Thank you, Rachel, for always bringing joy and fun into a project with an intense timeline that kept everyone on their toes!

Check out Rachel Cahill on linkedIn.

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Partner Spotlight: Rachel Cahill