Rachel Otto
Rachel was born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio but has been a westerner for over 10 years and plans to keep it that way. She originally attended The George Washington University on a Navy ROTC scholarship (which no one believes), but was subsequently asked to leave because her vision is so poor that allowing her to be anywhere near fighter jets would threaten the nation’s security. After recovering from the sad reality that Uncle Sam wanted everyone but her, Rachel finished her undergraduate education in English and biology at the University of New Mexico, where she learned how to dye her hair purple and collect other forms of body “art.” Fortunately, she also learned to ski, which took her to Taos, New Mexico for some post-graduate education in cocktail waitressing.Resisting the temptation to continue down the slacker path, Rachel felt the call of more schooling, and moved to Salt Lake City in 2001 to earn her Master’s degree in British and American literature at the University of Utah. After teaching undergraduate composition courses for the U and Utah State about such topics as the Patriot Act, pornography, living wage laws, and immigration reform, Rachel discovered that she was still only educated enough for two things: returning to ski bumming in Taos, or going to law school. She chose the latter, and completed her J.D. at the University of Utah in 2008.
Because every lawyer she knew at that time hated his or her job, Rachel decided to do things a little differently. She made a point of doing pro bono work, helping out the homeless at the Sunday morning Street Law clinic and finding summer jobs with environmental non-profits. While she had always planned to practice natural resources law, Rachel was lured into employment law during her second year of law school when she began clerking for Strindberg & Scholnick, where she finally met a bunch lawyers who really love their jobs, and who have passed that passion on to her.
