RachelMcCarthy

human first product manager.

Brooklyn, NY | February 2026

About

I'm Rachel — a product manager living in Brooklyn. I build things people actually get to see, touch, and use every day, and I think that's one of the most human things you can do with a career.

I studied economics and spent years training in classical ballet and competitive dance — which sounds like a strange combination until you realize both are just different ways of understanding systems, people, and what makes something work. That's the lens I bring to product: analytically grounded, visually inclined, and genuinely interested in the human on the other end. I've shipped marketplaces, explored AI-powered tools, and spent more hours in Figma than I'd like to admit. The throughline is always the same — technology that actually serves people, not the other way around.

Outside of work: art history rabbit holes, and a corner of the internet that's mine (10k of you, apparently).

Work

02 — 06

Projects, side experiments, and things I've shipped

Diary ↗
Year2026
Live
TypeSide project
StackNext.js · TS

A privacy-first personal diary app that runs entirely in the browser — no accounts, no backend, no data leaving your device. Built to explore what a genuinely private journaling experience looks like when you design around the constraint of zero infrastructure. Features mood tracking, rich markdown editing, Spotify embeds, image uploads with automatic compression, and tag-based filtering, all persisted locally.

The decision to go offline-first wasn't a technical shortcut — it was the product stance. Your most personal writing shouldn't require trusting a third party. Every feature was scoped through that lens: what does this need to be useful, and what does it need to leave out to stay honest about what it is.

Photos

03 — 06

Shot on film

SeattleWhidbey IslandUniversity of WashingtonSan FranciscoLaguna BeachNew YorkVeniceNiceCannesAix-en-Provence

Books

04 — 06

Things I've read and loved

01
The TwinGerbrand Bakker
Fiction
02
The Remains of the DayKazuo Ishiguro
Fiction
03
A Month in the CountryJ.L. Carr
Fiction
04
FrankensteinMary Shelley
Fiction
05
Six Records of a Floating LifeShen Fu
Memoir
06
All the Beauty in the WorldPatrick Bringley
Memoir
07
How to Murder Your LifeCat Marnell
Memoir
08
Dancing on My GraveGelsey Kirkland
Memoir

Art

05 — 06

Works that have stayed with me

Bamiyan Buddhas

Unknown

Bamiyan Buddhas

6th century

Nude Study

Rosso Fiorentino

Nude Study

c. 1520s

The Calling of Saint Matthew

Caravaggio

The Calling of Saint Matthew

1599–1600

Capella Nova Fresco Cycle, Orvieto

Luca Signorelli

Capella Nova Fresco Cycle, Orvieto

1499–1502

Adoration of the Mystic Lamb

Jan van Eyck

Adoration of the Mystic Lamb

c. 1432

Judith Slaying Holofernes

Artemisia Gentileschi

Judith Slaying Holofernes

c. 1620

The Arnolfini Portrait

Jan van Eyck

The Arnolfini Portrait

1434

Music

06 — 06

What I'm listening to