Alex Schmidt has pursued interests in design and public service through different avenues over her career. As an award-winning reporter and producer for NPR and others, she covered arts, business, technology and urban development. Alex has published work in The New Yorker and The Los Angeles Times, among other outlets. Her writing about UX, privacy and other design topics has been published in A List Apart and The Columbia Journalism Review. She is the author of the new Rosenfeld Media title, Deliberate Intervention: Using Policy and Design to Blunt the Harms of New Technology

As a researcher and UX designer, Alex has worked both for agencies and in the public sector. While much of her design work has been consumer facing, her greatest interest lies in the wicked problems inherent in enterprise design and the mysterious ways of large systems. These are all areas she has delved into as a product strategist for The Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Alex enjoys working in and around public service because it reflects a personally held value that humanity is better off when people work together to solve collective problems.