How can we strengthen leadership pipelines? One overlooked answer: Invest in women's sports. Data shows that investment in women's sports creates a powerful yet under-appreciated talent pipeline, building future leaders, closing the gender gap and driving high-performing teams. Deloitte US Chair Lara Abrash shares insights from the firm's research on women's sports – both the billion-dollar economic opportunity it represents and the unsung way sports strengthens the leadership talent pipeline.

Abrash, active in a range of sports since her youth, will also break down the leadership skills, mindsets, and team dynamics sports uniquely cultivates. She'll share the personal experiences that shaped how she leads and the way she approaches talent and capability. Her personal lessons learned can help anyone understand what's needed to develop future leaders, improve team performance and build talent pipelines that last.

Key Insights:

• Women's sports is growing rapidly - but remains an untapped sector and opportunity for economies and communities.
• Sports teaches girls how to team - but a range of factors make them more likely to drop out of sports than boys.
• Great leaders are great coaches. Abrash reminds us that "Managers manage outcomes while leaders lead people."
• Practice makes progress: Sports can build leaders who learn quickly from mistakes and adapt faster -- skills key for a fast-paced AI era.
• Sidestep the 'superwoman' myth: Sports shows we often accomplish more in groups. Women who admit they are less effective alone take the first step to building great teams and avoiding burnout.

About this episode:
Transcript - read here: https://www.weforum.org/podcasts/meet-the-leader/episodes/womens-sports-leadership-skills-gender-gap

Related report:
Deloitte Research - Game-Changers: Unlocking the Potential of Women's Sports: https://www.deloitte.com/global/en/Industries/tmt/perspectives/game-changers-unlocking-potential-women-sports.html
World Economic Forum - Sports for People and Planet: https://www.weforum.org/publications/sports-for-people-and-planet/

Related episodes:
What Astronauts Know About High-Performing Teams (That Many Don't Understand)
Read here: https://tinyurl.com/3h2xkyv9
Listen here: https://tinyurl.com/mrmtwnb4
Watch here: https://youtu.be/AI_7QcZy5A8

Why Smart Ideas Don't Always Land — and How to Build Creative, Curious Teams
Read here - Transcript: https://tinyurl.com/33b99j2u
Listen here - Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/5n8427nw

How to close gender gaps in tech - and the one skill AI can't learn
Read here - Transcript: https://tinyurl.com/s2ppr7s2
Listen here - Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/5xkkhd5w

As tech and AI transform productivity and free us from rote work, will humanity finally crack happiness? Maybe not, warns Jonathan Haidt. This social psychologist, NYU professor and bestselling author of The Anxious Generation has spent years studying the links between happiness, technology, and societal change. Unless key steps are taken, he says, the technologies transforming work and communication could pull humans further from a sense of meaning, connection and purpose, taking happiness even further from our grasps.

To progress on any big challenge ahead will depend on restoring focus, trust, and purpose. Haidt warns that AI and social media may be weakening all three—making intentional leadership more critical than ever. He shares research-backed insights that can help us better understand a fragmented, distracted world and the urgent challenge this brings to leaders running teams in a changing AI era.

Key Takeaways:

• Where happiness really comes from - and what people often misunderstand

• Understanding the attention crisis and what's contributing to it

• How AI and digital habits fragment attention and decision-making and undermine trust

• Simple practices and approaches to reclaim focus, connect with others and lead meaningful change more effectively

This interview was recorded in January 2026 at the Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland.

About this episode:
Read here - Transcript: https://www.weforum.org/podcasts/meet-the-leader/episodes/jonathan-haidt-happiness-focus-habits-ai
Watch here - YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bXp43TMMAI

About this guest:
https://jonathanhaidt.com/
Books and initiatives referenced in this episode:
The Anxious Generation https://www.anxiousgeneration.com/
The Righteous Mind https://righteousmind.com/
The Happiness Hypothesis https://www.happinesshypothesis.com/
The Constructive Dialogue Institute www. constructivedialogue.org

Related episodes:
Nick Thompson, The Atlantic: Why one CEO sets 'non -goals' - and what ultramarathons taught him about focus and mental toughness
Watch here - YouTube: https://youtu.be/Xh9PLsyptgA
Listen here - Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/bdbrspj7
Read here - Listen: https://tinyurl.com/mtdhe37w

IRC's David Miliband: How leaders can meet the moment in an increasingly disordered world
Watch here - YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABadygYvsZ0&t=16s
Listen here - Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/42hzpvvm
Read here - Transcript: https://tinyurl.com/3vk4723b

What most people get wrong about progress: Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker
Watch here - YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2IJjZs4E7A
Listen here - Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/4r69a5pr
Read here - Transcript:: https://tinyurl.com/3smrwev9

Radio Davos - The Anxious Generation: how phone-free schools can reverse a mental health pandemic
Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8s6Rw9rAqs&t=7s

As more professionals turn to AI for career guidance, is human mentorship extinct? Not by a long shot, according to our experts. Mentors will continue to be critical in shaping talent, but will make their mark not by sharing expertise but by leveraging truly human skills -- by meeting changing needs in time and by being a champion that unlocks potential, not just directs it.

Key insights:
- Mentorship is moving from expertise to emotional intelligence
- The best leaders will continue to prioritize people over output alone

In this moment of change, Learn how the top minds of our time have been changed by their own mentors and how an AI era will reshape how mentors guide teams and drive potential.

Some of the leaders featured in this episode:

-Workera's founder Kian Katanforoosh - on how mentorship is changing thanks to new technologies, and what it needs to be effective
-Limak Holding's Ebru Ozdemir - on bridging gaps through her initiative Global Engineer Girls and the traits great mentors share
-Habitat for Humanity's Jonathan Reckford - on what he learned from his grandmother and godmother on setting standards for himself
-Samantha Cristoforetti, European Space Agency - on what astronaut Butch Wilhelm taught her about the experience of the workday
-Organizational Psychologist Adam Grant - on how a diving coach helped him rethink risk and the simple question that he asks himself to this day

Related episode:
Meet The Leader at 200: 20 Leaders Share Their Best Aha Moments and Lessons Learned
Read here: https://www.weforum.org/podcasts/meet-the-leader/episodes/episode-200-top-tips-pivots-lessons-learned/
Listen here: https://tinyurl.com/ecye5b5v