Rachel Rosen is Director of Programming for Film Independent and the Los Angeles Film Festival. Previously, Rosen was Associate Director of Programming for the San Francisco International Film Festival where she had been a Film and Video Programmer since 1994. Rosen began her career in New York where she worked as a publicist in the film industry for five years. In 1988, she enrolled in Stanford University's prestigious Documentary Film Program in the Department of Communication.

While completing her thesis film, Rosen worked for the New York Film Festival as Directors Liaison and for the San Francisco Film Festival in addition to working in various capacities on student and professional film production. In 1993, Rosen moved back to New York for a year to accept a position as programming and publicity associate at New York's Film Forum.

Her short documentary on tornado chasers, Serious Weather, was shown at the Vancouver and San Francisco International Film Festivals and the British Short Film Festival. Rosen was born and raised in Washington, D.C. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Comparative Literature from Brown University.