Rachel Alexander
Rachel Alexander is uniquely qualified to mediate in the entertainment industry, combining her twenty years of professional training and experience in the performing arts with her substantial credentials in the law and alternative dispute resolution.
Alexander’s professional acting credits include film, theater (at Circle in the Square and elsewhere), print, and numerous television programs and commercials. She appeared in American Red Cross and American Express advertising campaigns, a number of independent films and the soap opera Guiding Light. In 1995 she joined the Screen Actors Guild.
Her training in Method Acting began in 1987 at Boston University Theater Institute (a program based on Uta Hagan’s Respect for Acting). She went on to study at Carnegie Mellon, Columbia University (with Andre Serban) and HB Studio. She was in the first class of the Actors Studio Master of Fine Arts Program at the New School (home of TV’s Inside the Actors Studio with James Lipton) under Academy Award winners Arthur Penn, Ellen Burstyn, and Lee Grant among others.
Rachel Alexander’s Specialties |
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Alexander is classically trained in voice and dance. She began her training in 1985 at the Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University, and has more than 20 years of dance training including ballet and pointe, and instruction at the Alvin Ailey School.
Driven by her interest in character and conflict, Alexander completed graduate credits at Columbia University School of Social Work and interned at Bellevue Hospital in the Adolescent Day Hospital before attending Benjamin Cardozo Law School at Yeshiva University.
At Cardozo, Alexander continued to focus on conflict resolution with the goal of becoming a mediator. She attended the Kukin Clinic under distinguished mediator Lela Love. She mediated weekly in New York small claims court, participated in the extensive Mediation and Negotiation curriculum at Cardozo, and was certified as a civil and divorce mediator. Williams co-founded Cardozo’s ABA accredited Alternative Dispute Resolution Society and created an Introduction to Conflict Resolution program for children.
Alexander spent her final year of law school as a visiting student at Vanderbilt University. She then served as Counsel for HIPAA Compliance at WebMD in Nashville, and as a consultant in the research and development (contracts and outsourcing) departments at large pharmaceutical companies in New York and New Jersey. In those positions she negotiated dozens of contracts, including consultant agreements and business associate agreements.
In 1994, she graduated from Columbia University’s Barnard College, magna cum laude, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature. While in college, Alexander studied Italian and spent a semester abroad in Rome. Prior, she studied French for six years.
Alexander volunteers her services at Partners for Women and Justice (offering legal support for women suffering domestic abuse), the United Jewish Community, the Tewksbury First Aid and Rescue Squad, and was a counselor for Helpline of New York. She is a certified scuba diver and an avid equestrian.
Admitted to practice law in New York, New Jersey and Maryland, Alexander serves as a court approved mediator on the civil roster in New Jersey and is an active member of the New Jersey Association of Professional Mediators.