Alex Sängerlaub

Alexander Sängerlaub is the Chief Impact Officer (CIO) and founder of futur eins. Alex is especially passionate about taking a holistic approach to digital publics and exploring how the utopian vision of an informed society can be achieved.

This guiding question shapes his areas of work: From 2017 to 2021, he helped establish and led the "Strengthening Digital Publics" program at the Berlin-based think tank Stiftung Neue Verantwortung (now Interface), managing projects on disinformation ("fake news"), fact-checking, and digital information and news literacy. Together with Anna-Katharina Meßmer and Leonie Schulz, he received the SWR and University of Tübingen’s Hans Bausch Media Prize in 2022 for the study "Quelle: Internet?"

In 2014, he founded Kater Demos, a utopian political magazine, serving as head of editorial and creative direction until 2019. This magazine was Germany’s first constructive political magazine. Previously, he worked as a research associate at the University of Hamburg and the Free University of Berlin in the field of journalism and communication science. He also worked at the Berlin agency Blumberry from 2013 to 2014, supporting, among other projects, Angela Merkel's 2013 Bundestag election campaign.

As Director of futur eins, he frequently provides long-term strategic support to other organizations. In 2024, he collaborated with the Federal Agency for Civic Education (bpb) to create the show "Fake Train" with Rezo. In 2022, he returned to constructive journalism as the "Program Director for the Future of Journalism" at the Bonn Institute. In 2021, he supported reset.tech and their analyses and campaigns against disinformation in the Bundestag election.

He is a sought-after speaker on topics including resilience of the information society, disinformation, information and news literacy, and constructive journalism (including at Goethe-Institutes in San Francisco & Seattle, 1014 in New York City, Streitraum, re:publica (2022, 2023), ARD/ZDF Media Academy, SWR, MDR, Max Planck Society). He also appears as a moderator (for the European Commission & dpa) and expert (including for the German Bundestag).

He studied journalism, psychology, and political communication at the Free University of Berlin, and has taught at the University of the Arts Berlin, Berlin University of Applied Sciences, University of Tübingen, University of the Bundeswehr in Munich, and Free University of Berlin. His never-finished dissertation, titled “Who Needs Journalists When You Can Have Robots?” focused on journalism and artificial intelligence but was always interrupted by life (a.k.a. Kater Demos). As a child, he actually wanted to become a music journalist and VJ at MTV.