Alexandra Samuel

Alexandra Samuel is an independent technology researcher and data journalist. As a regular contributor to The Wall Street Journal, The Harvard Business Review, JSTOR Daily and the CBC, she helps audiences understand a wide range of business and technology issues like the emergent sharing economy, the challenge of communicating with data, how to improve productivity with social media tools, and the battle over kids’ screen time.

An articulate voice on new social technologies, Samuel is a sought-after commentator on the Internet’s business and social impact. She is the author of Work Smarter with Social Media(Harvard Business Review Press, 2015), a practical guide to working more productively with email, Evernote, LinkedIn and Twitter. Over the course of her long career as a tech writer she has been a regular contributor to TheAtlantic.com, Oprah.com, The Toronto Star and The Vancouver Sun, and her work has also appeared in publications as varied as The Chronicle of Higher Education, Upworthy, National Geographic Assignment and The Mighty.

Samuel’s career as a digital explorer has spanned business, media, academia, government and NGOs. She is the former VP Social at Vancouver-based customer intelligence company Vision Critical, where she commanded the company’s efforts at integrating social media into its intelligence product for Fortune 500 brands. Formerly the director of the Social + Interactive Media Centre at Emily Carr University, Samuel also co-founded Social Signal, one of the world’s first social media agencies. As the Research Director for the Governance in the Digital Economy program, she worked with Don Tapscott to help governments from around the world address the impact of the digital revolution. She holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Harvard University, where her dissertation was the first comprehensive study of hacktivism (politically motivated computer hacking).