Rachel Pereira, a native of Queens, New York, and former classroom teacher and school principal, is a third year law student and current President of the Black Law Student Association at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. She is an executive editor on the UPenn Constitutional Law Journal. Rachel has served BLSA throughout her tenure at the law school as the Vice President in her second year and as a 1L representative to the BLSA executive board her first year. Rachel has worked with the law school administration and various committees to increase minority student and faculty enrollment and to increase course offerings that include the intersection between race and the law. Rachel served to organize BLSA’s first annual Pan-African Summit and helped to organize voter registration drives in the greater Philadelphia area during the 2008 primary and general election. Pereira organized the first and second annual Ray Trent Lecture on the Black Lawyer at the law school. She also participated in the Equal Justice Foundation community service project in New Orleans by assisting with Katrina relief efforts. Rachel also participated with UPenn Law for Obama to organize voters in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Pennsylvania during the 2008 primary. Pereira served on the Pennsylvania for Change campaign as a Get Out the Vote organizer during the 2008 Presidential election.
Rachel holds an Ed.D. and M.S. from Rutgers University in educational leadership and administration, and a B.A. from Hunter College, in elementary education. She is a commission member of the New Jersey Amistad Commission and recently affiliated with the New Jersey Juvenile Justice Commission. She serves as a volunteer at Elijah’s Promise Soup Kitchen and is a member of The First Baptist Church of Lincoln Gardens in Somerset, New Jersey. Rachel believes that her true fortune lies in her sustenance - her faith, family and friends and rests easily in the acknowledgment that ‘His eye is on the sparrow.’