Rachel Bagby

Rachel Bagby, JD, is a vocal artist and author of Divine Daughters: Liberating the Power and Passion of Women’s Voices.

Simultaneously raised amidst violent poverty and extraordinary privilege, she is the fourth-generation of an activists and healers lineage that reaches across the lines of race, class, spiritual, rural, urban, and artistic traditions.

Bagby's teaching career began in second grade when she created study groups to help her classmates learn how to read. She began honing the life-saving power of wisdom at the age of 11 when she inspired her father to replace his drug and alcohol addiction with the joys of singing in a choir. She designed and taught her first creativity programs for younger daughters at the age of 15.

After studying the nexus of belief and value systems, societal behavior codes, and social change at Stanford Law School, Bagby spent more than 25 years practicing and teaching the ways of transformation. She was identified as a thought-leader and mentor by several participants in the Collective Wisdom Institute’s groundbreaking research on the field of collective intelligence and spiritual wisdom in groups.

Her multifaceted career has since taken her to India, Japan, South Africa, and throughout North America to work with thousands of people devoted to bringing their voices to life. Her spirited vocal talents—which earned her a place in Bobby McFerrin’s improvisational ensemble, Voicestra—sustains a growing, worldwide audience.

She has released two recordings of her compositions, Full and Reach Across the Lines. Full features her soundtrack for the Emmy Award-winning documentary, Dialogues with Mad Women. She also coproduced Becoming Consciously Vibralingual, an inquiry into the relationships between sound, vibration, and collective wisdom. 

Muse, a 70-voice women’s choir conducted by Cathy Roma, commissioned and premiered Rachel’s DaughterWise Suite, a collection of new spirituals about the joys and challenges of eldercare. Bagby’s publishing company, Breathing Music, distributes her compositions.

Bagby's publications include articles about sustainability in Natural Home, the Wall Street Journal, Time, Ms. Magazine, Women of Power, as well as poetry in literary journals. Her anthologized contributions can be found in Nature and the Human Spirit: Toward an Expanded Land Management Ethic; Circles of Strength: Community Alternatives to Alienation; Reweaving the World: The Emergence of Ecofeminism; and Healing the Wounds.