Dr. Léa Steinacker is an award-winning journalist, entrepreneur, and social scientist with a PhD in the social dimensions of artificially intelligent systems (AI). Her work focuses on how technology interacts with people, practices, and the planet.

She has published on topics like automated facial recognition, synthetic voice generation, quantum computing, and her original framework of Code Capital. With her expertise in emerging technologies and their wide-ranging effects, she is a Lecturer at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, teaching courses such as "Social and Economic Impacts of Artificial Intelligence".

In 2018, Léa co-founded and is now the Chief Innovation Officer of ada learning, a learning and development community that equips leaders from diverse organizations for the future through content, live experiences, and practical innovation projects. Since its inception, ada has connected and worked with thousands of fellows from DAX organzations, SMEs, governments and NGOs.

Previously, Léa served as the Chief Innovation Officer of WirtschaftsWoche, Germany's leading business magazine, where she covered the future of work and socio-technological change. Prior to joining Handelsblatt Media Group, she worked with social justice NGOs in Bosnia-Hercegovina, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. She was selected as a Forbes 30 Under 30 leader, one of Medium Magazine’s Top 30 Under 30 journalists, a BCG Thought Leader, and an Atlantik Brücke Young Leader. In 2011, she was awarded the Henry Richardson Labouisse Prize. 
 
Léa holds degrees from Princeton University (A.B.), the Harvard Kennedy School of Government (MPP), and the University of St. Gallen (PhD). 

research

BOOKS 

Steinacker, L. (2022). Code Capital: A Sociotechnical Framework to Understand the Implications of Artificially Intelligent Systems from Design to Deployment. Nomos Verlag.

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ACADEMIC PAPERS 


Rietsche, R., Dremel, C., Bosch, S., Steinacker, L., Meckel, M., & Leimeister, J. M. (2022). Quantum computing. Electronic Markets, 1-12. 

Kostka, G., Steinacker, L., & Meckel, M. (2022). Under big brother's watchful eye: Cross-country attitudes toward facial recognition technology. Government Information Quarterly, 101761.

Suter, V., Meckel, M., Shahrezaye, M., & Steinacker, L. (2022, January). AI Suffrage: A four-country survey on the acceptance of an automated voting system. In Proceedings of the 55th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

Kostka,G.; Steinacker, L.; Meckel, M. (2021). Between Security and Convenience: Facial recognition technology in the eyes of citizens in China, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Public Understanding of Science.

Shahrezaye, M., Meckel, M., Steinacker, L., & Suter, V. (2021, April). COVID-19’s (mis) information ecosystem on Twitter: How partisanship boosts the spread of conspiracy narratives on German speaking Twitter. In Future of Information and Communication Conference (pp. 1060-1073). Springer, Cham.

Steinacker, L; Meckel, M.; Kostka, G. & Borth, D. (2020). Facial Recognition: A cross-national Survey on Public Acceptance, Privacy, and Discrimination.  Proceedings of the 37th International Conference on Machine Learning Law and ML Workshop, Vienna.
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