A Theater Kid and a Pastor’s Daughter Are Running eXp Latino. Their Résumés Get Even More Unexpected
Rachel Nead and Rebecca Soto have the kind of résumés that require follow-up questions.
The 2026 Chair and Co-Chair of eXp Latino arrived through theater and church, followed by enough unexpected career turns to make their current roles nearly impossible to predict.
So we asked the obvious question: How did you end up here?
Rachel Was Handpicked By Glenn Sanford Himself
Rachel Nead joined eXp 11 years ago, when her agent number still had only three digits. She was agent No. 585. Today, she is Head of Technology at SUCCESS Enterprises, a 130-year-old personal development media company under the same parent organization as eXp Realty.
The route between those two points was anything but obvious.
Rachel had no background in computer science or software engineering. She got into technology through payment disputes, then became curious about AI and began asking the technology itself to teach her how to use it. “I figured the fastest way to close that gap was to ask the tool itself to close it for me,” she says.
She began testing prompts and building things she had never imagined she could create. Each small success changed what she believed she was capable of doing. “I wasn’t building a résumé,” Rachel says. “I was building proof for myself, one small win at a time, long before anyone else was paying attention.”
As Rachel’s AI experiments became more ambitious, they caught Glenn Sanford’s attention. “I think Glenn saw someone who builds first and asks permission later, and he recognized that as a rare thing rather than a liability,” she says. Glenn nicknamed Rachel and her colleagues the “punk rockers of engineering” and personally selected her to help lead AI innovation at SUCCESS Enterprises.
That career leap came after years of entering professional rooms feeling as if she had something to prove.
“I knew I’d have to speak twice as well to be taken half as seriously,” Rachel says.
Her response was to arrive with more data, polish and preparation than anyone could question. Eventually, she stopped trying to anticipate every doubt in the room. “I stopped performing for the doubt and started just doing the work in front of people,” she says.
Her AI work is now bringing Rachel full circle as she begins building software for eXp’s staff and agents.
The Theater Kid Still Shows Up in Tech Meetings
Rachel’s résumé gets even stranger when theater, poetry, and performance enter the picture.
Rooted in New Mexico with Puerto Rican heritage, Rachel is also a storyteller and the published author of 90 Days of Gratitude. She still uses lessons from her creative background in rooms that appear to have very little to do with the stage.
“I’ve never believed those rooms are actually purely technical,” she says. “Every architecture decision, every pitch for a new build, is a story about why it matters and who it serves.”
Theater taught Rachel how to pace an idea, read an audience, and recognize when a pause can accomplish more than another slide. When she presents something complicated, she approaches it the way she would build a scene.
“If you can’t tell that story, the technology doesn’t land no matter how good it is,” she says.
Rebecca’s First Leadership Lesson Came From Her Dad
Rebecca Soto’s résumé begins years before real estate, inside the church her parents spent their adult lives serving.
She grew up watching them lead, create programs for people of all ages, and make service part of everyday life. More than 20 years ago, her father handed her John C. Maxwell’s The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, the first leadership book she remembers reading.
“He told me that of all the things he did, the most important thing besides serving was building leaders,” Rebecca says. “You must have successors and build the next generation.”
The lesson stayed with her. Then real estate gave her the first major test. Rebecca and her husband, Josue Soto, entered the industry together in 2006. Their careers were just beginning to climb when the housing market crashed and left them in financial ruin.
Rebuilding would require Rebecca to confront something the market had nothing to do with: her fear of putting herself out there.
People Thought Rebecca Was Unapproachable. She Was Actually Anxious.
At the time, Rebecca describes herself as quiet, shy, and nowhere near her full potential. Social anxiety made her avoid networking and hesitate to approach people she did not know. Then she learned how that nervousness looked from the outside.
“My fear of engaging with people was being perceived as closed off and unapproachable,” Rebecca says. “That really was not how I wanted to be seen.”
The realization pushed her to become more involved with the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals, better known as NAHREP. While making membership-renewal calls for her local chapter, Rebecca began hearing the same complaints again and again. So, she wrote them down.
The list became her checklist for rebuilding members’ interest, trust, and participation. Later, they won Chapter of the Year. The following year, Rebecca became President.
The woman who once avoided networking had helped create an organization people wanted to join again.
The Shy Woman Now Leads Nearly 300 Agents
Rebecca kept returning to NAHREP for more than a decade, eventually earning a place on its Alumni Wall of Distinction for her sustained leadership.
“As I reached up to the leaders above me, I was reaching down to pull up the next person,” she says.
Today, Rebecca and Josue lead an organization of nearly 300 agents while continuing to serve clients through their Orlando-based real estate team. She has also been recognized as an eXp Realty Mentor of the Year and an ICON Agent.
The couple even turned their 20 years of marriage, real estate, family, and market chaos into a book. Married in Real Estate shares what they learned while building a business and a life together.
For someone who once avoided networking rooms, Rebecca now spends much of her career helping other people enter them.
Somehow, It All Led to eXp Latino
Rachel’s résumé includes theater, poetry, payment disputes and artificial intelligence.
Rebecca’s includes church programs, a housing crash, social anxiety and a membership-renewal checklist that helped transform a NAHREP chapter.
Now, they are leading eXp Latino together.
As Chair, Rachel wants the network to recognize potential before an agent has collected enough accomplishments to recognize it in themselves. That is what people inside eXp Latino once did for her.
“It’s for the agent who just joined and doesn’t see herself reflected anywhere in the industry yet,” Rachel says. “It’s for the person who’s technically capable but has never been told that counts.”
As Co-Chair, Rebecca wants agents to have opportunities to learn, speak publicly and begin developing other leaders. Her vision goes back to the lesson her father gave her more than 20 years ago: Build the next generation. Drawing on her Cuban and Puerto Rican heritage, Rebecca sees Hispanic Heritage Month as an opportunity to recognize the Latino leaders who created paths for others and to remember that Latino voices can help shape what comes next.
“We serve no one when we keep our strengths and talents to ourselves,” she says. “There is strength when we come together and collaborate.”
Her advice for a young Latina entering real estate is the same advice she needed when she was still standing outside networking rooms, wondering whether she belonged inside.
“Do not let fear of language, accent or looking different stop you from achieving your goals,” Rebecca says. “Learn, grow, find mentors, let go of fear, get into the rooms and have a seat at the table. You belong.”
So, how did a theater kid and a pastor’s daughter end up running eXp Latino?
They followed every unexpected turn their résumés gave them. Now they are paying attention to the agents whose own careers may be one strange turn away from becoming just as interesting.
