Alexandra Borchardt is a senior journalist, book author, journalism professor and media adviser. She works as a consultant for the World Association of News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) in their Table Stakes Europe Programme on the digital transformation of newsrooms and for Hamburg Media School, where she heads the Digital Journalism Fellowship. She is also a Senior Research Associate at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford, where she served as Director of Leadership Programmes. Prior to this she was managing editor of Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ), Germany’s leading quality daily.
Alexandra is a journalism professor and programme co-manager at the University of the Arts in Berlin and teaches “Leadership and Strategy in the 21st Century” as a honorary Professor for Leadership and Digital Transformation at TU Munich’s TUM School of Management. She gives keynotes on digital transformation and the media and regularly publishes commentaries and essays, for example with Project Syndicate and as a columnist for Medieninsider. She is the author of Mehr Wahrheit wagen – Warum die Demokratie einen starken Journalismus braucht (Dare more truth – Why democracy needs strong journalism), Dudenverlag, 2020, and Mensch 4.0 – Frei bleiben in einer digitalen Welt
(Freedom in a digital world), Random House, 2018.At the Council of Europe she is a rapporteur on the Committee of Experts on Freedom of Expression and Digital Technologies and prior to that served as vice chair on the Committee of Experts on Quality Journalism in the Digital Age. She is also a member of the Committee for Editorial Independence at Czech publishing house Economia and a board member of Constructive Institute in Aarhus.
At SZ she held leadership roles in the politics and business sections. She was also founding editor of Süddeutsche’s ‘Plan W’, an award-winning quarterly magazine for women and business. Before joining SZ she worked for Financial Times Deutschland and Deutsche Presse-Agentur.
Alexandra holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Tulane University, New Orleans (1994), and in 2013 completed a Programme for Management Development at IESE Business School, Barcelona. She lives outside of Munich with her husband and two teenage children.
Bild: Jacobia Dahm