Rachel B. Lee
Co-owner, StandOut Authority™ | Co-founder, YOUmanize™ | The Branding Ladyboss
Keynote speaker and brand strategist helping founders, executives, and teams translate who they are into brands that people actually trust.
Rachel B. Lee
Rachel B. Lee is Co-owner of StandOut Authority™, Co-founder of YOUmanize™, and known as The Branding Ladyboss. She is a brand strategist, keynote speaker, and former enterprise marketing leader who has spent her career proving that the most durable brands are the most human ones.
Rachel began her career at Walton Isaacson, a boutique multicultural advertising agency in Chicago, where she worked with brands including Jaguar, Land Rover, Lexus, Unilever, Tyson Foods, and McCormick. That early work gave her a craftsperson’s respect for brand as a living, audience-led thing, not a deck of logos and color codes.
She moved inside to Microsoft and later earned her MBA at the McCombs School of Business at UT Austin in 2016. Back at Microsoft, she led brand strategy inside the Microsoft Partner Network, helping create more than a billion brand impressions at Microsoft Inspire 2017, and was recognized with the 2018 Speaker Excellence Award.
In 2019 Rachel joined Gartner as a Senior Brand Manager, then moved to Software Advice where she led a global brand refresh that generated more than $50M in incremental pipeline. Along the way she was named an AAF Austin Big Wig for Best Blog Writer and recognized as a LinkedIn Top Voice for her work on human-first branding.
Today Rachel is Co-owner and CMO of StandOut Authority™, where she and her husband Joshua B. Lee implement Authority Architecture for consulting leaders and advisory founders. The central transformation: Humanity → Authority → Answer. Rachel leads the brand strategy, messaging architecture, and employee voice systems that turn a founder’s expertise into a recognizable category authority.
She speaks regularly on human-first brand strategy, employee voice and trust at scale, and what it actually takes to build brands that matter in an AI-driven world.
People do not follow brands. They follow humans they trust.
Speaker
Rachel B. Lee is a keynote speaker who has trained and spoken for Microsoft, Gartner, SXSW, UT Austin, Rutgers, Kendra Scott’s Women’s Entrepreneurial Leadership Institute, and leadership communities across the US. With enterprise brand experience inside two of the largest technology companies in the world and a decade of agency and consulting work, Rachel brings an unusual combination of craft and pattern recognition to every stage.
Her talks challenge the assumption that brand is what a company says about itself. Instead, she shows audiences why trust is the new currency, why employees are the most credible brand channel a company has, and how human-first strategy translates into measurable pipeline and retention outcomes.
Rachel’s speaking style is direct, warm, and specific. Audiences leave with a clearer sense of how to make their brand legible to real humans, not just algorithms.
Humanity → Authority → Answer
The new framework for becoming the trusted answer in your category. Delivered jointly with Joshua B. Lee.
The Human Algorithm
Building real influence in a world of artificial everything. How human perspective becomes the signal AI cannot replicate. Delivered jointly with Joshua B. Lee.
Human-First Brand Strategy
Why trust is the new currency and how to design brand systems that earn it on purpose, not by accident.
Employee Voice and Trust at Scale
How to turn employees into your most credible brand channel without performative content or corporate scripts.
Awards & Honors
AAF Austin Big WigBest Blog Writer, 2019
Microsoft InspireSpeaker Excellence Award, 2018
LinkedIn Top VoiceHuman-first branding
What Leaders Say After Working With Rachel
Rachel is a true brand architect. She has the rare ability to see both the strategic big picture and the human details that actually move people. Any leader working with Rachel is getting someone who understands how modern brands are really built.BaaghilBrand Futurist, Global Brand Consultant, Author and Speaker
Rachel brought clarity and conviction to every room she walked into at Microsoft. She has a gift for translating complex strategy into messages people inside and outside the company can actually act on. That is the skill every brand leader wishes they had.Lisa ReshaurVP, Risk and Resilience, Microsoft
Rachel is one of the few people I trust to think about brand and content at the same time. She understands how human voice, trust, and systems work together, and she can teach it in a way that leaders actually apply.Katie BrinkleyFounder, Next Step Social Communications
Working with Rachel was a turning point. She reframed how we thought about our brand from the inside out and made us rethink who our people needed to be in the market. That shift shows up in our pipeline and in our culture.Kelly HoppingCMO, HYCU
Rachel is sharp, warm, and a real student of brand. She has a way of taking what feels intangible about people and culture and turning it into a clear strategy that leadership teams can act on.Suzanne GonzalesPwC
Rachel speaks about brand the way the best leaders speak about their people, with specificity and care. Every time I have heard her present, I have walked away with a clearer sense of what to actually do next.Michelle McDowellTruist
Ready to Work With Rachel?
The front door of StandOut Authority™ is a Foundations Conversation. It is where we listen to what you are building, where the brand and authority gap is, and whether we are the right fit to close it together.
Start a Foundations ConversationBook Rachel
For speaking inquiries, podcast interviews, and press requests, tell us a little about what you are building.