Rachel Foster

Rachel Foster has been dedicated to fighting injustice through legal advocacy, education, and legislative and policy work for over 35 years. She is a 2026 Time100 honoree, the magazine's list of the 100 most influential people in the world.

Rachel  has been an advocate at the Tompkins County Task Force for Battered Women and Sanctuary for Families, a community organizer at Lenox Hill Neighborhood House, and an attorney and board officer at Brooklyn Legal Services, as well as a board member of the Citizens Committee for Children, Brooklyn Bridge Animal Welfare Coalition, and Community Board Two in Brooklyn. For five years, she was Director of New Abolitionists, a national campaign to raise awareness about sex trafficking.

In 2016, Rachel co-founded World Without Exploitation, the largest national anti-trafficking coalition. She received the New Yorkers Who Make a Difference Award from United Neighborhood Houses for her work representing disenfranchised New Yorkers and was honored by the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, Apne Aap, World Without Exploitation, and Jewish Women’s International for her outstanding commitment to justice and equality for women and girls.

Rachel was an adjunct professor at the NYU Silver School of Social Work, teaching a course in sex trafficking, and has given lectures at universities in the US and abroad. Rachel was co-chair of the New York State Women’s Bar Association Human Trafficking Committee. She writes on issues of gender-based violence, recently focusing on the search for justice for survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse, and has appeared on numerous new outlets, including The Lead with Jake Tapper and BBC.

In 2016, Rachel co-founded the Brooklyn Cat Cafe, a one-of-a-kind not-for-profit animal shelter and low-cost veterinary clinic that has hosted over 340,000 visitors and handled over 16,000 adoptions.

As Founder and President of Heights Advisors, a Brooklyn based real estate development and investment firm, Rachel has developed, invested in, and made loans on over $2 billion of real estate projects, spanning ground-up construction, adaptive reuse, and structured debt and equity. She is committed to social impact real estate development, building the first ground up domestic violence shelter in the country, with apartments housing over 100 survivors, that allows families to exit abusive situations with their pets. Rachel developed a transitional family shelter in Brooklyn with 165 apartments housing over 500 individuals and a family shelter in the Bronx with 160 apartments also housing over 500 individuals.

Rachel graduated from Cornell University, recently serving on various university councils, and from Brooklyn Law School where she was an Edward V. Sparer Public Interest Fellow.

“There are some people in the world who work every day to make the world a little more just, a little kinder, day in, day out, without seeking public praise or even a title. They do this because they believe, as Shirley Chisholm once said: “Service is the rent you pay for room on this earth.” And also, because change itself is their deepest reward. Rachel is one of those tireless, kind, great-hearted people.

– Gloria Steinem