Lauren Soderberg

Founder, CEO

Lauren Soderberg founder and CEO of Progressive Coaches is an Olympic Coach with a background in high performance sport and development spanning 20 years. A previous athlete turned coach, Lauren established herself on the world professional coaching stage taking a little-known Pacific Island nation VANUATU from no world ranking back in 2008 to securing multiple international podium finishes, the country’s first FIVB gold medal and a top 10 result at the 2015 World Championships. 


Since then, Lauren has gone on to become an FIVB international Coaching Instructor and Coach Developer with an impressive 23 international coaching medals accumulated throughout her career thus far. Co-founding Soderberg Academy and Beach Camp International, Lauren has gone on to coach athletes from all over the globe.


Lauren became the first Australian woman to coach Australia at Olympic level in her sport of beach volleyball in the 2016 Games when her U23 World Championship winning team qualified into the 2016 Rio Olympic Games. She then went on to manage Volleyball Australia’s Asia / Pacific Partnership program working closely with the Australian DFAT to deliver sport for development projects in the Asia Pacific region. 


Returning to high performance sport in Europe, Lauren worked in Denmark with the Copenhagen Beach Elite Men’s and Women’s Program as both the Technical Head Coach and Coach Developer. 
More recently Lauren has worked as Director of Influence for an international NGO utilising the power of sport for positive social impact and assisting in the achievement of the UNSG’s. 

Lauren currently works with the Australian Institute of Sport working as Athlete Wellbeing and Engagement Manager for Squash Australia and is involved in the Women in High Performance Coaching Projects. She is thrilled to be able to use her expertise to assist governments, national sporting bodies and organisations to advance high performance and sport development programming to achieve meaningful goals and looks forward to Progressive Coaches bringing together the worlds of performance sport and sport for development.