Rachel Konrad started her career as a business reporter at newspapers and online, covering the world’s largest industries. In 2008, she moved into corporate communications, working directly for Elon Musk as Tesla launched and scaled commercial operations through the company’s historic IPO. From 2011-2016, she worked for Carlos Ghosn at Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi, overseeing communications, marketing, brand, and content for a top-three global car group with 350,000 employees across dozens of languages. She then took a job with the stealth-mode synthetic biology startup Impossible Foods, where she helped build the team that made Impossible a household name with mainstream, mass-market consumers. From 2022-2024, she worked for Dave Friedberg’s San Francisco-based venture capital firm The Production Board, where she leaned into all aspects of communications, marketing and brand for the VC firm — from generating awareness for early-stage portfolio companies to executing a SPAC with a Brazilian agricultural conglomerate. In addition to teaching Winning Writing, Rachel serves as a board member and adviser for audacious, young companies trying to decarbonize Earth and improve public health.