Sounding Joy Founder and Executive Director Christy Vogel has been named one of ten 2026 L’Oréal Paris Women of Worth honorees, selected from more than 5,000 nominations received nationwide. Vogel is the only honoree representing the Southeast.
The L’Oréal Paris Women of Worth program recognizes women who are making an extraordinary difference in their communities through charitable work. Vogel was selected for her dedication to improving access to pediatric hearing care through Sounding Joy, the nonprofit organization she founded in 2021.
As part of this recognition, Sounding Joy has been awarded a $25,000 grant, enough to provide up to 25 hearing aids for children whose families cannot afford them.
A Personal Mission
For Vogel, the work is deeply personal. At 11 years old, she learned she had significant hearing loss and discovered she had already taught herself to read lips without realizing it. Her family could not afford hearing aids, so she spent much of her childhood and young adulthood without them. Only after receiving her first pair as an adult did she understand how much she had been missing.
That experience inspired her to found Sounding Joy in 2021.
“I decided that I would create this nonprofit so that no other child would have to go through what I did,” said Vogel.
Helping More Children Hear
A pair of pediatric hearing aids can cost up to $8,000, and insurance coverage is often limited or unavailable. Families who earn too much to qualify for assistance are frequently left to cover the full cost on their own.
Sounding Joy works with pediatric audiologists across Florida to provide professionally fitted hearing aids and related services to these children during the years that matter most for their development. Each approval changes what a child can hear at home and in school, and Vogel knows firsthand what that means. “It’s going to impact their lives in ways that they just can’t imagine,” she said.
A National Platform
In addition to the grant, L’Oréal Paris Women of Worth honorees receive mentorship and a national platform to bring greater awareness to their causes. For Sounding Joy, that platform brings attention to an issue most families never encounter until it reaches their own child.
Vogel also reflects on the community she has joined. “Individually, we’re pretty powerful, but together as a sisterhood, uplifting each other and helping each other, we are absolutely unstoppable,” she said.
Learn more about Christy’s Women of Worth recognition.
Sounding Joy invites the community to join in celebrating Vogel’s recognition. To learn more about Christy and her fellow honorees in the L’Oréal Paris Women of Worth program, visit www.WomenofWorth.com.
Read L’Oréal Paris’s announcement
