Listening, Caring, Acting: How L-Acoustics Shaped the Conversation Around Live Sound at Davos 2026  Listening, Caring, Acting: How L-Acoustics Shaped the Conversation Around Live S...

At the World Woman Foundation’s Davos Agenda in January 2026, L-Acoustics showed up as a genuine participant in some of the week’s most substantive conversations. Across multiple sessions, we helped frame questions that matter: how do we build economies that care? How does sound open dialogue where words alone fail? And what does it mean for a business to invest in access to culture and promotion of equality as strategic imperatives rather than afterthoughts? 

An Extended Investment 

Our presence at the World Woman Davos Agenda was more than a single panel appearance. We co-presented the Opening Night VIP Experience on January 19 alongside Foreign Policy, bringing together global leaders for an evening that set the tone for the week’s dialogue. That night, Françoise Cardoso, our CSR and Sustainability Executive Director, joined Rupa Dash, Founder and CEO of the World Woman Foundation, and French composer and music producer DeLaurentis, for an experience that signaled from the outset how we think about sound: as a medium for connection and shared experience, not just performance. 

We also anchored a closing night experience on January 22, featuring DJ Hesta Prynn, an American DJ and licensed therapist whose work sits at the intersection of sound and emotional well-being. That choice said something important. From opening night to closing, music at our events was treated as a form of care, not just entertainment. 

Building a Caring Economy Through Dialogue 

On January 21, Françoise joined a session titled “Building a Caring Economy Through Corporate Dialogue,” alongside Anil Soni, CEO of the WHO Foundation, Blanca Juti, Chief Corporate Affairs and Engagement Officer at L’Oréal, and Katarzyna Gaweł of Forbes Women. The conversation examined what it actually means for corporations to take care of workers seriously as a business value, and how that commitment translates into measurable outcomes rather than aspirational language. 

Françoise brought a clear point of view. “Advancing gender equality is a strategic investment for companies in performance and long-term value creation,” she said. “The World Woman Agenda at Davos demonstrates that when organizations strengthen the care economy, foster inclusive leadership, and build equitable opportunities, they can unlock innovation, resilience, and sustainable growth. Equality is not a cost but it is a competitive advantage.” 

That framing cut through one of the more persistent hesitations in corporate sustainability conversations: the idea that investing in people, particularly women, is a form of generosity rather than a driver of results. Françoise argued the opposite. Care, when embedded into organizational structure, does not slow a business down. It produces the conditions for genuine, lasting innovation. 

Listening as Leadership: Sound, Culture, and Care for Our Shared Planet 

On January 20, Amber Mundinger, our Global Director of Creative Engagement, joined a session that approached the theme of dialogue from a different angle entirely. Alongside Katja Iversen of the Museum for the United Nations (UN Live) and Cathy Runciman of EarthPercent, Amber explored how sound and artistic expression can activate the kind of listening that precedes meaningful leadership. 

The session opened with a provocation: dialogue begins before we speak. It begins with listening. In a forum defined by urgent global challenges, the panelists made a case for approaching those challenges not through louder messaging but through deeper attunement. Listening, they argued, is itself a leadership skill, and one that is chronically undervalued in rooms where influence is measured by who speaks most forcefully. 

Amber connected this directly to our work in immersive audio technology. “Creativity is not a luxury in climate conversation,” she said. “Sound, music, and artistic expression have the power to make the planet felt, not just understood. Through immersive sound technologies, we can create environments where audiences don’t just hear a story about nature or conservation; they experience it spatially and emotionally. That shift transforms abstract data into something deeply personal. And it is that emotional connection that moves people from awareness to care, and from care to action.” 

The conversation also drew on the Sounds Right initiative, which channels natural soundscapes into artist-led conservation efforts, giving the environmental movement a sonic presence that data and policy briefs rarely achieve on their own. When a listener encounters a threatened ecosystem through carefully designed music, the distance between human experience and planetary health dissipates. Closing that void, Amber, Katja, and Cathy argued, is precisely where genuine engagement begins. Not in the argument, but in the feeling that precedes it. 

What a Caring Economy Sounds Like 

Taken together, the two sessions pointed toward something larger than either one addressed on its own. The caring economy that Françoise described and the immersive, emotionally grounded forms of engagement that Amber championed are expressions of the same underlying conviction: that connection precedes action, and that the quality of our listening determines the quality of our leadership. 

At Davos 2026, L-Acoustics came to demonstrate that sound is not incidental to the conversations that shape our world. It is one of the most direct paths into them. Sound moves through the body before it reaches the mind. It creates shared experience in rooms where disagreement might otherwise calcify. And when designed with intention, it can make people feel the weight of a planetary crisis or the possibility of a more equitable future in ways that data alone rarely achieves. When people truly hear one another, and feel what is at stake, something shifts. That tangible, gratifying feeling of purpose, fulfillment, and meaning derived from a shared sound experience is what we build at L-Acoustics, and Davos 2026 was a powerful reminder of why it matters.