Before the show floor opened Thursday morning, a sold-out crowd of over 300 attendees filled the Keynote Theater for the 11th annual AVIXA Women’s Breakfast. Sarah Joyce, chief global officer, AVIXA kicked off the event, welcoming the packed house to celebrate the global community committed to supporting and empowering women who work in technology and the AV industry. Founded in 2015, the AVIXA Women’s Council now has more than 1,200 members worldwide.
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Before they handed things over to Mariana Atencio for a highly emotional and interactive keynote, Heather Best of Diversified introduced Women Without Boundaries, an industry-wide recognition program created to celebrate the women driving progress across AV, media, and technology. WAVIT founder and owner of BAM Marketing, Brandy Alvarado-Miranda, then introduced Emily Cieslak and Alexa Johnson as the 2026 Mary Cook Empowerment Award: Designing the Future scholarship. Jeanne Lewis, senior manager, channel and events, Sony, also came to the stage with some eye-opening numbers from the event’s sponsor. Lewis shared that 36% of Sony North America employees are women; 37% of Sony Pro Display Solutions employees are women; and 42% of Sony Pro Display Solutions leadership positions are held by women.
Atencio, a Peabody Award-winning journalist, bestselling author, media entrepreneur, inspiring storyteller, and host/moderator, then took attendees on a journey from an uncertain future to becoming a widely recognized personality and leader in her keynote, Real Matters: Building Trust in an Unreal World. She discussed how trust has become one of the most valuable assets leaders and organizations can cultivate. It is more so true today, in the AI Era as she called it, as the world is continuously changing with emerging technologies from the very AV professionals sitting in front of her.
Her journey began at the age of 23 in her home country of Venezuela. Atencio, she recollected, went to her “happy place,” a mountain hike where plenty of others had trekked. On her descent, she shared a terrifying tale of how she was held at gunpoint, asked to give up her valuables and then count to 100. As she counted, not knowing if she would reach 100, the culprit fled, and while Atencio survived the attack, she was left a changed woman.
The experience made her lose trust; trust in everything, from the people she passed on the street to what would become her calling card, the media. It was then that she moved to America and not only changed the course of her career, but her outlook on what makes a successful leader.
Trust in a New Era
“It’s the AI Era,” Atencio said. “ChatGPT can write the quote. Every bid looks the same. The experts are leaving. Uncertainty is the weather.”
Trust, she added, is what drives it all. Shifting from her own experience to the world of Pro AV, she pointed out that nobody leaves a concert talking about the cabling or even what the subwoofers looked like. Pro AV work is meant to be invisible. Customers have high expectations, ones that need to be 100% certain that when the lights go down, the technology all has to work with the flip of a switch. But there is no way to know that will happen… until it happens. It is trust that continues to make the uncertainty more certain, especially in Pro AV.
“Courage is what gets you there, but trust is what keeps you alive,” Atencio said. She shared video of some of her weather reporting, often in hurricane or dangerous flood conditions. And every time, she wasn’t alone. A crew followed her, and she constantly reminded the audience that it was not because of her title, it wasn’t because of her stature in the industry; it was because they trusted her. She pointed to a study called The Neuroscience of Trust from the Harvard Review to reaffirmed that. When employees trust their surroundings, she cited, 74% are less stressed when they can be themselves, 50% said they were more productive when they have that trust, and 106% said they have more energy.
When nothing you see can be trusted, Atencio said, there’s only one thing left to do. Trust yourself.
The Eye: Infinite Resolutions, No Update Required
Trust, she said, is built at eye level. For the remainder of her time on the stage, she explored the architecture of trust. The three-tiered architecture included seeing yourself, seeing each other, and finally, being seen. She had several interactive portions of the speech, all relating to the eye as the beholder of truth. One such activity required attendees to look their neighbor in the eyes for 60-straight seconds. Why? People always have their head in their phones in 2026, and Atencio shared that a recent report showed that fewer than 4% of people lock eyes in a conversation. If trust starts in the eye, holding a person’s gaze makes them feel seen and allows them to see through your eyes.
She shared one last story of Paul. Her team of four was trapped in a hurricane and Paul, who was well-prepared and boarded up for the storm, not only took her team in, but wound up becoming part of the team, traveling with them on their storm coverage. Paul, who was not necessarily trustworthy of the media, found something that made him feel comfortable with Atencio and her team. “People don’t follow leaders,” she said. “They follow their why. Let them see your why and trust follows.”
She concluded imploring the audience to use what we learned about trust and eye contact on the show floor because after all, Atencio concluded, everyone on the show floor is a connection waiting to happen.
