Episode overview

Steve Grace sits down with Gabriela Scharf, founder of Get Cool Brands, to trace her journey from Brazil to Australia, through Red Bull and WeWork, and into building a community platform for sustainable consumer brands. The conversation covers the tension between big brand careers and purpose-driven work, what WeWork got right about community, and why Gabriela chose the word “cool” instead of “sustainable” as the centrepiece of her brand.

From Brazil to Red Bull to WeWork

Gabriela arrived in Australia six years ago on a student visa, frustrated that her existing career in Brazil, which included community management, TED Talk production, and marketing at Red Bull, could not be translated into work under the 20-hour restriction. She left Australia to obtain an Italian passport, came back on a working holiday visa, and within a month received a referral from Red Bull’s Global Marketing Manager in Austria to join the Australian team.

At Red Bull she learned that you are not working for a product but for a potential experience. That understanding of brand as experience and culture became the foundation for everything she has built since. After Red Bull she moved to WeWork, arriving during COVID when the company was under severe pressure from people working from home. The isolation of that period deepened her conviction that community is not a nice-to-have but a fundamental human need.

Why WeWork was right about community even if the numbers were wrong

Gabriela defends the core WeWork vision despite the company’s well-documented problems. She argues that Adam Neumann saw what was coming: the world needed community, not just desks. COVID validated that vision in a way that even the company’s critics could not ignore. The post-COVID surge in events, gatherings, and community platforms is evidence that the underlying instinct was correct. The execution and the financial structure were the failures, not the idea itself.

Building Get Cool Brands: community for the planet-conscious consumer

Get Cool Brands is a community platform and brand discovery tool for consumers who want a more sustainable lifestyle and for founders building consumer products with some positive environmental dimension. The deliberate choice to avoid words like “sustainable” or “eco” reflects Gabriela’s view that those labels come with expectations no small brand can fully meet and that they sometimes alienate the consumers who most need to make better choices.

Brands that join Get Cool Brands on a subscription basis get exposure to engaged consumers, access to workshops, events, and a network of professionals and mentors. Consumers join for free and receive early access to launches and exclusive offers. The platform is designed to lower the barrier to sustainable living by making it feel like a lifestyle choice rather than a sacrifice.

The Community Collective ambassador role

Beyond Get Cool Brands, Gabriela is an ambassador for the Community Collective, a global network for community managers. The role reflects her belief that community management has become a distinct professional discipline, not a subset of marketing or events. She sees this as one of the careers accelerated most dramatically by COVID, which created both a crisis of isolation and a renewed appreciation for the people skilled enough to build belonging at scale.