Prof. Dr. Alexandra Borchardt

Prof. Dr. Alexandra Borchardt is an experienced journalist, author, lecturer and consultant. She is co-director of the Journalism Innovators Program at the Hamburg Media School, Honorary Professor for Leadership and Digitalization at the TUM School of Management at the Technical University of Munich and Senior Research Associate at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford. She supports the World Association of News Publishers Wan-Ifra as a coach in the Table Stakes Europe program to support regional media companies in their digital transformation. To date, it has supported 18 publishers from Germany, Portugal, Spain, Austria, Ireland and the UK.

Borchardt's main focus is on how digitalization is shaping the media, democracy, the world of work and human behaviour. Her latest book Daring more truth - Why democracy needs strong journalism was published by Dudenverlag in March 2020. In 2018 she published People 4.0 - Staying free in a digital world (Gütersloher Verlagshaus). She is lead author of the EBU News Report "What's Next? Public Service Journalism in the Age of Distraction, Opinion, and Information Abundance", published by the European Broadcasting Union in November 2021.

At the TUM School of Management of the TU Munich Borchardt has been teaching "Leadership and Strategy in the 21st Century" since 2014. Until the end of 2021, she was also a member and rapporteur of the Committee of Experts of the Council of Europe Freedom of Expression and Digital Technologies . She previously served as deputy chairwoman of the Committee for quality journalism in the digital age. She is also a member of the Supervisory Board of the Constructive Foundation in Aarhus, the Advisory Board of the M100 Sanssoucis Colloquim, the Socio-Political Advisory Board of the Acatech project Shaping Technological Change and the Committee for Editorial Independence of the Czech media group Economia.

Alexandra Borchardt is a columnist for the industry service Medieninsider and was an author for the international opinion portal Project Syndicate, the digital magazine ada and for the Think Tank Center Liberal Modernity. As Director of Leadership Programs at Oxford University, she spent two years developing and leading training courses for senior editors and media managers. Her research focused on talent management and diversity. Prior to that, she worked in daily journalism for more than two decades, most recently as chief of staff at the Süddeutsche Zeitung.

She worked at SZ for twelve years in leading positions, including in the domestic policy and business departments. She also developed and was responsible for the SZ business magazine "Plan W - Frauen verändern Wirtschaft", which was awarded the Ernst Schneider Prize for Business Journalism in the "Innovation of the Year" category in 2016. In October 2015, she published the pamphlet: The Internet between dictatorship and anarchy: Ten theses on the democratization of the digital world (Süddeutsche Zeitung Edition).

Before her time at SZ, Borchardt held various positions at the Financial Times Germany She has been a member of the editorial team for five years since the newspaper was founded in 1999. She was trained at the German Press Agencywhere she was also science and business editor.

Alexandra Borchardt has held a Ph. D. in Political Science since 1994 from the Tulane University New Orleans. In 2013, she completed the Program for Management Development at the IESE Business School Barcelona. She lives with her husband and two children in the Munich area.