Rachel Levey’s path to a career in solar started with a breast cancer diagnosis. In 2017, and 29 years old at time, Levey received her diagnosis while working in retail.
“I had to reassess how I spend my time. What do I put my energy into? I started to be really challenged by my working situation, and the industry I was in. It felt so meaningless, extractive and wasteful,” she said.
During chemo treatment, Levey found a job opening at PV Squared (No. 274 on the 2026 Top Solar Contractors List), a worker-owned cooperative and solar installer based in Massachusetts. She went in for the interview — donning a head scarf for chemo-related hair loss — and was hired.
Rachel Levey, sales and service specialist for PV Squared, is also an internationally ranked dragon boat competitor.
“My time suddenly had a different value and importance to me,” she said. “I happened to find both things in the same place. I didn’t have a particular interest in renewable energy. I was just looking for something that didn’t feel bad for other people — a workplace that cares about people in another way.”
Since then, Levey has taken off the head scarf but put on many other hats. She is PV Squared’s sales and service specialist, responsible for taking and directing calls to the right department. But she’s getting more involved with the cooperative’s operations and service team and helps customers with array troubleshooting. She explains different incentives and equipment to customers. And she’s building in-house software to assist with system monitoring, e-signature arrangements and project proposal templates.
Levey is also the secretary for PV Squared’s board of directors and sits on several of the cooperative’s committees.
“All of it fits into the categories of helping others and problem solving,” she said. “They come in with a question, and I’m able to help them. I’m happy, they’re happy.”
Levey came out the other side of treatment cancer-free, happy in her career but without a passion to focus her attention.
“When you go through breast cancer treatment, it’s really intense and then it’s done. It’s gone to the wind,” she said. “My mom could see I was really struggling.”
Her mom’s friend was a member of a dragon boat team in western Massachusetts composed entirely of people who had or were undergoing treatment for breast cancer. Dragon boat racing is a sport where teams of up to 20 people paddle 40-ft canoes decorated with a dragon head across lengths of water. The sport started more than 2,000 years ago in China.
Rachel Levey hoists a silver medal she and her teammates earned while competing at the World Dragon Boat Racing Championships in Brandenburg, Germany.
Dragon boat racing has grown in popularity among breast cancer survivors thanks to medical research from Canadian sports medicine specialist Don McKenzie, who studied how arm-focused exercise affects lymph nodes related to breast cancer. That exercise became dragon boat racing, and it has spawned whole teams with breast cancer survivors globally and led to the founding of the International Breast Cancer Paddlers Commission (IBCPC).
“Not only was the physical work supportive, because the movement of the stroke is restorative, the women completely bonded and found this support group they didn’t know they were seeking,” Levey said.
She joined the Paradise City Dragon Boat team in 2019 and is now its head coach, leading practices twice a week on the Connecticut River. The team has competed at an international level. In 2023, members fundraised to participate in IBCPC’s Dragon Boat Festival in Waikato Region, New Zealand.
Last year, the International Dragon Boat Federation (IBDF) added a breast cancer division to the World Dragon Boat Racing Championships. Levey qualified for the U.S. national team and traveled to Brandenburg, Germany, for the competition. The team medaled silver and bronze in each race. Her coworkers live-streamed the competition at PV Squared’s office.
The IBDF announced that next year’s competition will be in Hong Kong. Levey is already training and aiming for a gold medal this time.
Levey considers herself a completely different person today than who she was prior to being treated for breast cancer. She attributes some of that change to finding a new career.
“It’s something that I’ve grappled with a lot — the not wanting to lament the past or not going back to that version of that person. The way I think about it now, that Rachel had her time. She had 29 great years. It’s my turn now. You walk through the fire and come out a different person. I do not wish cancer on any person, and I don’t want it to come back, but who I am today and the things I have in my life today, I absolutely would not give up what I went through if it meant giving up what I have now,” she said.
This story was featured exclusively in our 2026 Top Solar Contractors issue. See the issue and full list of top U.S. solar installers here.
