Title: Senior Vice President
Firm: Fieldman, Rolapp & Associates Inc.
Age: 38
Public education has been at the forefront of Rachel’s life and led her to a fruitful career in public finance.
When she was 16 years old, she moved from Taiwan to Southern California to attend San Marino High School as a sophomore. She enrolled in the English as a Second Language program and to finish her school curriculum and satisfy graduation requirements, she took classes at a local community college.
The public school system was eye-opening, she said, and she loved the learning environment.
“I benefited greatly from the public education system and that’s the main reason why I’m passionate about public finance, and specifically serving K-12 and community college districts,” she said.
Rachel now has over 10 years of experience in public finance, with fittingly, a focus in K-14 districts. She has been involved in assisting school districts and community college districts with capital facilities funding plans, such as general obligation bonds, lease revenue bonds and community facilities district special tax bonds, among others.
Rachel has worked extensively on CFDs specifically to help districts get more financing and mitigate the impact of new development, such as in San Marcos Unified, California. CFDs allow issuers to finance a specific project or service through a special tax assessment district. That tax is just applied to residents of the CFD that would benefit from the project. The taxes then are used to pay down debt that was initially used to finance the project.
In San Marcos, the CFD in San Marcos Unified was used for school facilities.
In her free time, Rachel loves to play with her three- and five-year-old and on weekends she loves to cook traditional Chinese food for them and her husband.
“I get this sense of accomplishment, the same that I get from bond closings, when I see my loved ones enjoy my cooking,” she said.
