Connecter. Communicator. Changemaker. Carolyn Davenport-Monce

If you've been to one of our Lausanne events, there's a good chance you've met Carolyn.

You may know her as the person who occasionally arrived with delicious soup, but you'll also know her as someone who is always part of the conversation. She is a thoughtful contributor, a generous mentor to many of our younger members, and someone whose questions consistently help move discussions forward. When we are lucky enough to get some, the soup is simply an added bonus.

Carolyn Davenport-Moncel is a strategic communications, governance, and organizational alignment advisor with more than 30 years of experience spanning politics, technology, global health, philanthropy, entrepreneurship, and the private sector.

She has led brand, content, digital, and communications initiatives for organizations ranging from startups to global institutions.

More than twenty years ago, she founded MotionTemps, a pioneering virtual agency that connected independent consultants across continents long before distributed work and fractional leadership became mainstream. Today, she is the co-founder of Lacuna Collective, a diagnostic-led advisory practice that helps organizations identify and address the gap between what they intend and what is actually happening. She is also the founder of Simply Souperlicious, a storytelling-driven food venture rooted in culture, heritage, sustainability, health, and community.

Carolyn is passionate about helping organizations solve the right problems, build trust, and create meaningful change through better alignment, communication, and decision-making.

Every standout career has a "before" and an "after." Can you share a specific moment, either a bold risk you took or a daunting challenge you faced, that fundamentally redefined your professional trajectory and led you to where you are today?

I've taken several risks throughout my career, but what connects them is that they often happened before there was a clear roadmap or a clear understanding by the general public.

For instance, more than twenty years ago, I launched MotionTemps, a virtual agency built around independent consultants working across time zones and geographies. We operated from Chicago to Paris, San Francisco, London, Geneva, and Melbourne. Today, people might call it a fractional model. At the time, we were simply trying to connect the right expertise to the right problem regardless of location.

We approached our work with what I now call a “glocal” mindset. We understood global trends but applied them through local realities. We worked more like a cooperative than a traditional agency, bringing together independent specialists who could collaborate across borders and cultures.

Interestingly, both our clients and consultants were women. It wasn’t a deliberate strategy. It was simply where I found community, talent, and trust.

The “after” is that I ran that company for 13 years. I did not fully understand it at the time, but MotionTemps prepared me for a career in digital. It taught me how to work across distance, culture, technology, partnerships, and trust before those became standard business conversations. It also taught me how to lead people, find my voice, and become an entrepreneur.

I’ve kept on taking more risks, even while holding down other positions.   In Swiss Romand, a lot of people know me because of Simply Souperlicious. That company may appear to be a simple soup business, but it has always been about more than soup. It became a way to explore culture, heritage, sustainability, health, and storytelling through food. The “after” was learning that even a simple product can carry a much larger story when it is rooted in identity, memory, and care.

Lacuna grew from another observation: organizations often struggle not because of poor execution or poor communications, but because they are solving the wrong problem. By the time communications is brought into the conversation, many of the decisions shaping outcomes have already been made. The “after” has been realizing that my work is not only about helping organizations communicate better. It is about helping them see what’s going on earlier.

Looking back, I don’t think my career has been defined by a single profession. It has been defined by a willingness to work across boundaries, ask different questions, and build something before the language for it fully exists.  In my opinion, innovation often looks unusual before it looks obvious.

Whether you are leading a major tech marketplace or a grassroots community, how are you intentionally challenging the status quo in your industry to create a more inclusive or innovative future?

One way I am challenging the status quo is by encouraging organizations to spend more time understanding the problem before rushing toward solutions.

In technology and beyond, there is enormous pressure to implement new tools, particularly artificial intelligence. While I see tremendous potential in AI, I also see organizations attempting to automate processes and accelerate workflows that were never working particularly well to begin with.

If decision-making is unclear, ownership is fragmented, or critical stakeholders have been left out of the conversation, technology does not solve those problems. It often accelerates them.

I've always believed that the people most impacted by a decision should have a voice in shaping it. Too often, transformations are designed without including the people who will ultimately live with the consequences. Whether that is employees, customers, patients, communities, or partners, their perspective matters.

This is one reason I advocate for bringing communications and stakeholder perspectives into discussions earlier. Communications professionals often have a unique view across the organization. They can see where trust is forming, where assumptions are being made, and where friction is likely to emerge.

My challenge to the status quo is simple: slow down long enough to solve the right problem.I believe there is a better way to achieve alignment, innovation, and transformation without sacrificing the role of people in the process. As technology continues to evolve, human judgment, experience, empathy, and decision-making will become even more important.

Beyond technical expertise, what is the one "hidden" superpower or soft skill that has been most instrumental to your success, and why should the next generation of women in digital prioritize it?

It took a long time to realize this, but I think I have three superpowers.

Pattern recognition. People often describe it as intuition, but I see it as the ability to notice relationships that others may not yet see. It's reading the room, understanding context, connecting dots across disciplines, and recognizing signals before they become obvious.

Translation. Finding a pattern has little value if you cannot help others understand it. Throughout my career, I've often found myself translating between different groups: technical experts and leaders, local communities and global organizations, donors and implementers, strategy and execution. The ability to take a complex idea and reduce it to its clearest form is one of the most valuable skills I've developed.

Transferability. Some people view expertise as something that stays within a single profession or sector. My experience has been the opposite. The lessons I learned working on political campaigns helped me in global health. The lessons I learned in marketing medical devices helped me design strategies for executive education and diplomacy. The lessons I learned in entrepreneurship informed my work in philanthropy.

The lessons I learned building communities shaped how I approach communications and governance. Technology changes rapidly. Platforms come and go. Job titles evolve, but the ability to recognize patterns, translate complexity, and apply ideas in unexpected places remains valuable regardless of industry. I would encourage the next generation of women in digital to become students of systems, not just tools. Tools change and become obsolete. Understanding how people, organizations, and ideas connect will always matter. 

All this to simply say that the “messy middle” isn’t something to survive until your “real” career begins. It’s where much of your wisdom and grit are built, so it can be a perfectly fine place to be. 

Success is rarely a straight line. What is a common myth about your specific career path (or entrepreneurship) that you want to debunk to give a more honest perspective to women currently navigating their own "messy middle"?

The biggest myth is that detours are mistakes.

When people look at a career journey, they often assume every move should fit neatly into a long-term plan. Mine certainly didn't.

I've crossed an ocean, and at this point, I’ve worked longer outside my home country than within it. I've worked in politics, entrepreneurship, digital, communications, global health, philanthropy, and food. From the outside, some of those shifts may look unrelated. In reality, every one of them taught me something that I still use today. Not a single one of those experiences was wasted.

The reason I can approach problems differently today is because I've seen them through multiple lenses. I've worked in different sectors, cultures, countries, and stages of growth. Those experiences allow me to recognize patterns, ask different questions, and consider solutions that may not be obvious at first.

They've also taught me the importance of surrounding myself with people who don't think exactly like I do. Innovation rarely comes from everyone agreeing. It comes from bringing different perspectives together and remaining curious enough to learn from them.

Our community is built on mutual support and inspiration. If you could leave one piece of "radical" advice for the WDS community something that isn't found in a standard business textbook what would it be? 

You are good enough. That’s it!

Over the course of my career, I've often found myself being “the only.” The only woman in the room. The only American. The only Black American. Sometimes all three at once.  I've also been the youngest person on the team, the oldest person on the team, the person with the least experience, and the person with the most experience.

What I've learned is that there will always be reasons to question whether you belong if you let other people define the criteria.  Don’t let them.

You do not need permission to exist, and you don’t need permission to lead, even if you are doing so from below. Leadership is not always a title. Sometimes it is the person who sees the problem first, asks the better question, brings the right people into the room, or refuses to let a bad decision move forward without challenge.

You do not need to have every qualification before you speak up. You do not need to wait until you feel completely ready. Your perspective has value precisely because it is different from everyone else's.

The world does not need more people trying to fit in. It needs more people willing to bring their full experience, curiosity, and perspective to the table. Don't let anyone convince you otherwise!|