You don't understand business until you understand people.
Rebecca Veksler is a consumer psychology expert, fractional COO and CMO, and founder of SoL Cups, a global sustainable products brand she built from a bedroom in Bondi at 21 into one of the top four reusable cup companies in the world.
Under her leadership, SoL Cups operated across global offices and reached customers across Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Canada, Europe, the United Kingdom and Asia, supplying thousands of stockists in over 11 countries. Its corporate partners spanned the world's biggest fashion houses and global department stores, including Tommy Hilfiger, Calvin Klein, David Jones, JP Morgan and Fortnum & Mason, and SoL Cups became the number one choice for corporate branding and gifting. Rebecca ran the company for a decade before closing it on her own terms in 2024.
Before founding SoL Cups, Rebecca spent years immersed in the fitness industry, managing gyms and working as a personal trainer. It was there, on the gym floor, that she learned how to build a community from nothing, how to lead people, and how to understand what truly drives human behaviour, the foundation of everything she now teaches audiences about brand, culture and growth.
Rebecca also brings a powerful resilience story to the stage, having built SoL Cups while incredibly unwell with severe autoimmune illness since she was 21. Audiences leave with practical, psychology-backed strategies for performing under pressure, drawn directly from her own experience of rebuilding her health whilst managing severe chronic pain and her business at the same time.
She has served as Vice President of the Bondi Chamber of Commerce, the youngest in the organisation's history, as both a member and as Learning Chair at Entrepreneurs' Organisation Sydney, where she managed multi-million-dollar event and education budgets for some of the country's most successful leaders.
Rebecca is currently co-founding Lumie, an AI-powered health data platform which gives her live insight into AI and the future of work. She works as a fractional COO and CMO advising consumer and corporate brands on growth, operations and brand strategy, and speaks on consumer psychology, brand building, resilience, and leadership in the AI era.
Talking Points
Why People Buy - Consumer Psychology and Brand Building
Most brands are built on guesswork. The ones that last are built on a deep understanding of how people actually think, feel and decide, something that matters more than ever in an AI saturated world where content is infinite and trust is scarce. Rebecca built a global sustainable products brand from her bedroom into one of the top four reusable cup companies in the world, supplying thousands of stockists across more than 11 countries and becoming the number one choice for corporate branding and gifting among some of the biggest fashion houses and department stores on the planet. She started before Shopify and Facebook ads existed, and had to become an expert in e-commerce and digital community building from scratch, going on to build one of the most engaged online communities in her category. At the centre of this session is the framework she built from a decade of doing it, Trust + Experience + Results, the equation behind lifetime customers, word of mouth and the kind of loyalty no algorithm can buy. Rebecca brings it to life through her own story and case studies of standout brands that have built genuine demand and community, showing audiences how to cut through the noise of the AI era to build something people actually want to belong to. Audiences leave with a practical framework they can apply to their own brand, product or service, regardless of industry or scale.Why People Buy - Consumer Psychology and Brand Building
Key Takeaways:
- The Trust + Experience + Results framework for understanding what actually drives customer loyalty, word of mouth and purchasing decisions, beyond price, product and algorithms
- How to build a thriving, authentic community in an AI saturated world, the human principles that cut through no matter how the tools change
- Real world lessons from building, scaling and competing globally as a small brand against industry giants, brought to life through her own decade at the helm and case studies of brands people can't stop talking about
Best suited to: founder and startup events, marketing and brand summits, e-commerce and retail conferences, corporate innovation days, panels and hosting.
Can AI Cost You Your Best People? - AI and the Future of Work
AI is moving faster than most leaders can process, and the gap between founders who use it well and those who use it badly is already costing companies their best people. Rebecca isn't observing this shift from the sidelines, she works with AI every day, inside her own ventures and across the businesses she serves as a fractional COO and CMO, and she has seen firsthand entire teams walk out the door because a founder lost the plot and decided AI was smarter than their leadership team. Many of the biggest failures come down to the same root cause, a lack of communication and alignment across departments, which AI can either expose and worsen, or help solve. In this session, she shares the practical reality of integrating AI into a growing business, where it genuinely adds value, where it erodes trust and culture, and how leaders can use it to close cross departmental gaps rather than widen them. Audiences leave with a clear, critical thinking framework for adopting AI in a way that strengthens collaboration and high performance, not just productivity.Can AI Cost You Your Best People? - AI and the Future of Work
Key Takeaways:
- A practical framework for evaluating where AI genuinely adds value versus where it damages culture and trust
- How to identify and close cross departmental communication gaps, with AI as a tool rather than a replacement for alignment
- How to bring teams along on the AI journey, building critical thinking, collaboration and confidence rather than fear or resentment
Best suited to: corporate leadership teams, executive offsites, industry conferences navigating AI adoption, HR and people and culture events, panels and hosting.
Resilience and High Performance Under Pressure
At 21, while building a global business from nothing, Rebecca spent years living with severe autoimmune illness and chronic pain that doctors told her she may never fully recover from. Rather than stepping back, she leaned into the very thing that had always driven her, a deep belief in herself, an obsession with the psychology of human behaviour, and a mission she refused to let go of. In this session, Rebecca takes audiences inside the neuroscience and psychology of pain, belief and drive, and shares how she channelled it all into building a company and a community where people felt part of something bigger than themselves. It's a philosophy she still lives by today, now building her next ventures with the same conviction. This is founder storytelling at its most personal, a session about what it really takes to keep going when your body says stop, and how leading with purpose and belief can become the most powerful force in any room.Resilience and High Performance Under Pressure
Key Takeaways:
- An understanding of the neuroscience and psychology behind pain, belief and high performance, and how to apply it to your own life and leadership
- What it really takes to lead with purpose and conviction, even when everything is working against you
- How to create a sense of shared mission and belonging that makes people feel part of something bigger than themselves
Best suited to: corporate wellbeing and performance events, founder communities, sales kickoffs, conferences on resilience and change.
The Hidden Killer of High Performing Teams - Leadership and Building High Performing Teams
Rebecca has spent years inside some of Australia's major corporate groups through her fractional COO and CMO work, scaled global teams across a decade of running an international business, and chaired leadership and education programs for some of the country's most successful entrepreneurs through her roles with the Bondi Chamber of Commerce and Entrepreneurs' Organisation. Across all of it, she's seen the same truth play out again and again, high performing teams start from the top, and toxic leadership cannot be culture engineered away. She's also seen the hidden killer that sits just below that, managers who should never have been put in charge of people. In this session, Rebecca shares real, unfiltered experience from inside high growth businesses and major corporates alike, the teams that walked out, the managers who should never have been promoted, and the turnarounds that proved culture can be rebuilt when leadership finally owns it. These are the stories of what not to do, why it happens, and what it costs, told by someone who was in the room. Audiences leave with genuine insight from real experience, lessons to learn from and implement, and a clear eyed view of where leadership accountability actually needs to sit, from the top down.The Hidden Killer of High Performing Teams - Leadership and Building High Performing Teams
Key Takeaways:
- Practical strategies for building and scaling team culture deliberately, starting with leadership accountability at the top
- Real experience shares from inside major corporates and high growth businesses, candid stories of what not to do and why it matters
- How to identify and fix the hidden killer of high performing teams, toxic leadership and managers who shouldn't be managing people, before it costs you your best talent
Best suited to: leadership summits, executive offsites, HR and people and culture conferences, corporate leadership development programs.
Patient Led, Operator Built - AI for Healthcare and the Future of Health Data
For over a decade, Rebecca has lived inside the healthcare system as a patient, navigating chronic illness, fragmented records, and the exhausting experience of explaining her own history again and again to specialists who never had the full picture. But what makes her perspective rare isn't just that she's lived the problem, it's that she's spent her entire career mastering the other side of it. Rebecca built a global consumer brand on a deep understanding of how people think, feel and decide, and has spent years as a fractional COO and CMO designing products, services and operations around real human behaviour. When she says healthcare should be patient led, she isn't speaking as a hopeful customer, she's speaking as an expert in what it actually takes to design around people, and why most organisations fail at it. That combination is exactly why she is now co-founding Lumie, an AI powered health data platform, alongside Dr Sophia Moscovis, a scientist with a PhD in Immunology and Genetics and over 20 years in healthcare transformation and digital health. In this session, Rebecca brings both lenses together, the lived experience of scattered pathology results, missed connections between specialists, and the mental load carried by patients and families, and the operator's view of where AI and health technology could genuinely change the experience of care. Audiences leave with a human centred perspective on the future of health data, grounded in lived experience, consumer psychology and real operational depth.Patient Led, Operator Built - AI for Healthcare and the Future of Health Data
Key Takeaways:
- A rare dual perspective on healthcare innovation, the patient who has lived the fragmented system, and the operator who knows how to design products and services around real human behaviour
- A grounded view on how AI and health technology could genuinely improve patient and carer experience, and where it will fail if it isn't designed around people
- What patient led innovation actually means in practice, from someone who has built consumer businesses on understanding people, not just serving them
Best suited to: health tech and medical conferences, healthcare leadership events, digital health and innovation summits, patient experience forums.
Failing Forward - The Psychology of Reinvention
Rebecca built a global business from nothing, scaled it for a decade, and then made the hardest decision of her career, to close it on her own terms. What followed wasn't the end of the story. Within two years she had built a fractional executive practice working inside some of Australia's fastest growing businesses, co-founded an AI powered health platform, and turned the story of closing her company into one of her most powerful professional assets. In this session, Rebecca explores the psychology of failure, and why failing well may be the most underestimated skill any founder can develop. She shares what it actually felt like to walk away from something she had poured a decade into, the identity shift that followed, and the realisation that starting again wasn't starting from scratch, it was starting from everything she had already learned. She also brings her CMO lens to a truth most founders resist, that honest founder led storytelling has become the most powerful trust builder a business can have, and the ability to talk openly about failure is what separates the founders people trust from the ones they scroll past. This is an unfiltered, deeply personal session on resilience, identity and reinvention, and on trusting yourself enough to build something ten times bigger, not despite what came before, but because of it.Failing Forward - The Psychology of Reinvention
Key Takeaways:
- A reframe of failure as a skill, and why the ability to fail well may be the most underrated trait in high performing founders and leaders
- An honest, personal account of what it actually feels like to close something you've built, and how to navigate the identity shift that comes with it
- Why your story, including the failure, is your most defensible asset as a founder, and how content built on honesty creates trust that can't be bought or faked
Best suited to: founder and entrepreneur events, business schools, conferences on change and reinvention, awards nights and gala keynotes.
MC, Facilitation and Hosting
Rebecca's approach to MC and facilitation work is the same as her approach to building a business: thorough preparation, precise structure, and genuine investment in the outcome. She arrives knowing the brief, having asked the questions that matter and with a clear view of what the event needs to achieve. That preparation shows in the room. She holds a programme with the kind of clarity that makes a day feel purposeful rather than managed, brings the same rigour to a panel conversation as she does to a full conference, and draws out the kind of depth from speakers and guests that surface-level hosting rarely reaches. A decade of international stage experience, combined with five years running speaker programmes for senior business leaders at Entrepreneurs Organisation Sydney, means she knows how to make a room work.MC, Facilitation and Hosting
Available as: conference MC, panel host and convenor, workshop facilitator, roundtable host.
Rebecca showed me what it looks like when strong business acumen meets genuine purpose. She brings a sharp understanding of business operations, strategic partnerships and value alignment, a ... keep reading DISSH/MJBALE
Rebecca is one of the most sharp, structured thinkers I've worked with. She brought a level of clarity and depth that's rare, nothing was surface level. She's incredibly thorough, asks the right questions, and genuinely knows her craft inside out. If you want someone who can cut through noise and drive real results, Rebecca is it.
I can't speak highly enough of Rebecca's skill in driving operational outcomes globally, building high performing teams, and applying deep knowledge of human behaviour to solve roadblocks. I've engaged Rebecca across speaking initiatives, from expert panels to 200 person corporate events. She delivers an engaging session and clear outcomes.
