Rachel Blackman

A native of Seattle with a burning curiosity to learn new technologies, Rachel has been working in the industry for nearly two decades across a wide variety of fields—game development, adaptive microchips, telecommunications, and others—on both back-end tools such as compilers and network libraries, and consumer-facing technology such as the popular Trillian cross-platform multi-network instant messaging client.  She is also an active participant in a number of open source initiatives, most notably the Growl Project which provides a flexible user notification framework on Mac OS X.  At Synapse, she manages the mobile development efforts on iOS and Android, and has served as an architect on various Bluetooth Smart device communications protocols.

When not working on technology, Rachel is a semi-professional photographer, a science fiction writer, and rides horses.