Rachel Sanchez leads Content Marketing, Communications, and Customer Experience at One Drop, where she joined as the 5th employee in 2015. She left a career in law to join a growing startup because she believed in One Drop’s mission: to transform the experience of living with diabetes by designing medical tools and devices that look good and put the user's experience first. Prior to One Drop, Rachel was an attorney at Fish & Richardson P.C. where she focused on intellectual property litigation, specializing in life sciences. Rachel graduated from Harvard Law School in 2012 where she studied Food & Drug Law, Health Law and Patent Law. She is also an active member of JDRF, the leading global organization funding type 1 diabetes (T1D) research. Through JDRF, she serves as a mentor for newly diagnosed children and a member of the Young Leadership Committee for the San Francisco Bay chapter.
How has your life experience made you the leader you are today?
I was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes when I was seven years old, so living with a chronic disease has really shaped who I am today. Diabetes never gives you a break; it never takes a day off. Taking control of my diabetes has helped me learn to be both responsible and organized, which translates well to leadership roles in the workplace.
How has your previous employment experience aided your position at One Drop?
Being a lawyer really prepares you for any kind of career. You learn how to frame logical arguments and support them with facts. It makes you good on your feet. And in working for all sorts of clients with different needs, and I quickly learned how to juggle multiple projects all at once, which has been essential in my position at One Drop.
What have the highlights and challenges been during your tenure at One Drop?
The highlights: I have a customer-facing role, so I get to engage directly with people using and benefiting from our products. It always makes my day when customers go out of their way to give us positive feedback about their One Drop experience.
The challenges: Time. We're a tiny start-up and our industry is full of companies that have been around for years, so every minute counts! We've got these all these awesome ideas and it can be tough to accomplish everything at the pace we'd like to.
What advice can you offer women who are seeking to start their own business?
Find a good mentor. That's the key to being successful in anything. Find a good mentor who you can bounce ideas off of and ask questions. Someone who has a lot of experience. It's critical in any career.
As an attorney, I was very grateful to have more experienced attorneys to lean on for advice. And working in a make-dominated field like IP law, I was particularly grateful for my female mentors. Having another woman to look up to who had successfully navigated through a similar situation was invaluable.
How do you maintain a work/life balance?
It's something that you definitely have to work towards. I find that it's very hard to “turn off,” because I'm so passionate about what we're building at One Drop and I'm involved in so many different projects. It's easy to get consumed by it all.
But it's important to take breaks and make sure you aren't neglecting other important aspects of your life. Since starting at One Drop, I've become much more organized when it comes to my personal life, and now I always make sure to set aside time for my husband, extended family, my friends and of course, my dog.
What do you think is the biggest issue for women in the workplace?
The hardest thing is you won't always have a mentor in your organization to turn to for help. When you're blazing a trail on your own— especially when you're looking at an entire leadership team that doesn't have any women on it, and your goal is to be on that team—you can feel lost and maybe even discouraged. Thankfully, networking events and even networking websites, like LinkedIn, can be very helpful here. Never be afraid to reach out beyond your immediate circle!
How has mentorship made a difference in your professional and personal life?
When you embark on a new career, there may be times when you feel like you're the only person who has ever made that mistake, not known the answer, or otherwise been in your situation. In those moments, having a mentor is HUGE. They help you put it all in context, see the bigger picture, and figure out your path. Having access to someone who can relate to your circumstances and provide support and reassurance is incredibly helpful.
When I was an attorney, having a mentor was essential. At a firm, when you're new and don't have a lot of experience, you need someone who would pull you into their cases and give you opportunities to develop your skills. It's a great way to get good experience and prove yourself to the other members of your firm.
In a lot of ways, Jeff Dachis, the founder of One Drop, has become my mentor. He's a digital visionary and a serial entrepreneur who saw a major need in healthcare and put his skills to work to develop a solution. Prior to One Drop, Jeff was CEO and Chairman of Dachis Group, where he helped coin the term ‘Social Business,’ set the vision and strategy for its consulting practice and the development of its big data social analytics platform, and drove the eventual strategic sale to Sprinklr, the leading social experience management platform. Before that, Jeff founded Razorfish, the world’s largest digital marketing solutions firm.
Jeff brings all his energy and varied experiences to the healthcare solutions we're developing now with One Drop, and I've learned so much working with him.
Which other female leaders do you admire and why?
Hillary Clinton. Talk about intelligence, resilience, and the epitome of grace under pressure. She has been fighting a judgmental system for 25 years and has never lost sight of what she is fighting for. She is an unflappable role model for generations of Americans - especially women and girls - and proof that perseverance, hard work and never giving up matters today more than ever.
What do you want One Drop to accomplish in the next year?
We have some big plans for One Drop; we are working on getting regulatory approval in other countries so we can bring One Drop | Chrome to people with diabetes all over the world. We’re also brainstorming new products and accessories and, as a user of One Drop, I'm excited to see how those turn out! Lastly, we’re wrapping up a study that shows the effectiveness of our novel approach to diabetes care, and we hope to release the data very soon.
