Rachel Hunkler serves as the Director of Programs and Evaluation at Eradicate Hate. In this role, she oversees the strategic design, execution, evaluation, and scaling of Eradicate Hate’s yearlong programs and the integration of programs and Working Groups. She is also the team lead in running the annual Eradicate Hate Student Summit in Pittsburgh and leads the UP End Hate initiative for youth. Hunkler provides leadership and expertise on efforts to gather, analyze, and disseminate data on Eradicate Hate’s impact data. She specializes in instructional design, training facilitation, youth development, program management, and monitoring and evaluation.

Prior to her work at Eradicate Hate, Hunkler spent six years at Arizona State University’s McCain Institute, where she managed various federal awards and programs with annual budgets of up to $1.8 million. During her tenure, Hunkler served in management roles across the Institute’s Preventing Targeted Violence, National Security and Counterterrorism Fellowship, and Global Leadership portfolios. She played a critical role in the incubation of the Prevention Practitioners Network that is now housed at Eradicate Hate. In addition, Hunkler was a coauthor of the National Policy Blueprint to End White Supremacist Violence, which was published jointly with the Center for American Progress in April 2021 and informed the first-ever White House National Strategy to Counter Domestic Terrorism. Finally, Hunkler was a founding member of the McCain Institute’s Diversity Equity Inclusion and Belonging Task Force.

Hunkler began her career as a classroom teacher, both in the U.S. and abroad. In 2013, she received a Fulbright Grant from the U.S. Department of State to teach English at a bilingual high school in Spain. She was granted a rare Fulbright renewal in 2014 to serve as the Global Classroom Coordinator for the Spanish Fulbright Commission, where she ran Madrid’s Model UN program for over 300 students and conducted training for 65 Fulbright English Teaching Assistants. Upon returning to the U.S., Hunkler taught high school English and Spanish literature in Nashville for several years before earning her master’s degree.

While she no longer spends her days in classrooms, Hunkler is a fervent advocate for violence prevention efforts through life-long education, which she believes is the most powerful tool for creating more inclusive, peaceful societies. Through her work at Eradicate Hate, she seeks to build bridges of mutual understanding across communities and borders.

Hunkler is originally from Nashville, Tennessee. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Spanish and K-12 education from the University of Alabama, a master’s degree in international education policy from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and a graduate certificate in Program Evaluation from Arizona State University.

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