Upaya Social Ventures

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Kim Rachmeler

Board Vice Chair

Kim Rachmeler is currently retired but was most recently the Director of Engineering for The New Data Project where she led the team responsible for VoteWithMe, a relational organizing app to get out the progressive vote. When Kim started her career, she worked as a software developer for some large Silicon Valley firms including Hewlett-Packard and Silicon Graphics. Kim also co-founded (and crashed) her own start-up company before landing a job as Group Program Manager for Amazon in mid-1997. During her ten years at Amazon, she was the CIO for International, VP Retail Systems, VP WorldWide Customer Service, and VP Global Supply Chain, and the VP of Worldwide Discovery and a member of the s-team.

After retiring in 2007, she became deeply involved with Vittana, a non-profit dedicated to getting disadvantaged students in the developing world access to the financing they need to earn the degrees that will land them the steady jobs they need to leave poverty behind for good, eventually becoming co-chair of their board. In mid-2015, Kim joined the US Digital Service to help the federal government get better at developing and delivering software services. After returning to Seattle she joined The New Data Project to help preserve democracy. Her two French bulldogs are fully supportive of all her efforts as long as those efforts involve treats and scratchies. Kim holds two degrees in Electrical Engineering from Stanford.