Rachel Cooke

Rachel Cooke is the founder of Lead Above Noise and the host of Macmillan’s Modern Mentor podcast. She helps organizations and leaders enhance how work gets done so that both business results and employee experiences can thrive.  

Her expertise is in activating engagement, addressing burnout, and leading through change in ways that energize teams and advance business goals. Rachel champions a collaborative leadership style—where plans are built with people, not for them—and teaches leaders to move forward without overcommitting to rigid plans. Her “lily pad” approach focuses on the next smart move rather than the full map, creating momentum through clarity, adaptability, and progress that builds as it goes.

Rachel’s insights have been featured in Fast Company, Business Insider, HuffPost, Bloomberg Quint, and more. She holds a Master’s in Organizational Psychology from Columbia University and a Bachelor’s in Human Development from Cornell.

She lives in Northern New Jersey with her husband, two daughters, and their dog Ruthie. She does her best thinking while lifting heavy things and is convinced the answers to every one of life’s most complex questions can be found in an episode of The Golden Girls.