Excellence Hall of Fame

Anastassia is one of the world’s leading experts on cybersecurity and artificial intelligence and their implications for corporate governance. She was born in the former Soviet Union and, despite being interested in astronomy and piano, went to the Moscow State University (Lomonosov) to study Linguistics and Slavic Studies, graduating in 1994 with an award for excellence. She then moved to Germany to pursue her doctorate in Psychology at the University of Bonn, graduating in 1997 and becoming the youngest PhD in the country that year.

Anastassia started her career working for Munich Re as an underwriter specializing in international occupational accidents and occupational disease risks. While there, she wrote three books on workers’ compensation insurance and employer’s liability. In 2001, she left Munich Re to join McKinsey where she worked for four years before moving to DaimlerChrysler Financial Services as EMEA Head of Business Transformation.

In 2006, she joined T-Mobile where she served as Executive Vice President of Group Strategy until 2009 when she joined T-Mobile’s parent company, Deutsche Telekom. In Deutsche Telekom, her initial role was as Senior Vice President, Planning & Development and she was also appointed to serve on its executive board with responsibility for Technology and Innovation. Nine months later, she took on the role of Acting Chief Products and Innovation Officer and, later in 2010, she became Senior Vice President of Business Development and Investments.

While with Deutsche Telekom, Anastassia was appointed to the Technology Advisory Board of Star Alliance. She also served on the Communication Business Advisory Board of Intel from 2010 to 2011. In 2011, she left Deutsche Telekom and moved to the US semiconductor and telecommunication company, Qualcomm, to take over as its Senior Vice President for Business Development Europe.

In 2013, Anastassia founded her own boutique Advisory Company, Lauterbach GmbH Consulting and Venturing – which traded as 1AU Ventures – to advise Fortune 500 companies and investors on artificial intelligence and cybersecurity. In the same year she was appointed to the board of the US data company Dun & Bradstreet. She served on Dun & Bradstreet’s board until 2019 and chaired its Innovation & Technology Committee. Excellence Hall of Fame Nominee – Anastassia Lauterbach 2

Still very much a fan of the piano and of the arts in general, in 2013 Anastassia founded Startups Meet Arts™ to facilitate creative collaboration between global companies and individual influencers in the arts. She also joined the Board of Kaspersky Labs – one of the world’s leading anti-virus and cyber security companies – where she served for two years.

In 2016, following Goldman Sachs’ investment in eKomi – a leading provider of online reviews and ratings with over 15 thousand corporate customers around the world – Anastassia was appointed to eKomi’s board.

In 2017, she became a Senior Advisor to McKinsey & Company on Artificial Intelligence. The following year, she was appointed to the Supervisory Board of the German fintech company, Wirecard, just prior to it replacing Commerzbank in the DAX index. According to the FT reporter Dan McCrum, Anastassia was almost immediately at loggerheads with the executive management. Also in 2017, she became an Advisory Board Member of Diligent Corporation, a U.S. corporate governance organization and also published her book The Artificial Intelligence Imperative: A Practical Roadmap for Business, co-authored with Andrea Bonime-Blanc. The German national newspaper, Handelsblatt, recognized the publication as one of the most important books on economics ever written by a woman.

On January 1, 2019, Anastassia was appointed to the board of EasyJet. Meanwhile, in Wirecard, she brought in McKinsey to conduct a compliance review and, as soon as the 2018 audit was completed, she hired KPMG to conduct a special audit. Also that year, she contributed two chapters to the American Bar Association’s publication; The Law of Artificial Intelligence and Smart Machines and in November was invited by the Queen of Sweden to speak at the Royal Palace in Stockholm as part of an initiative to protect children from online abuse.

In 2020, Anastassia called for the dismissal of Wirecard’s CEO and COO and is on record in April stating that the company needed to get rid of its entire management board as they couldn’t be trusted. In June, massive fraud came to light, the CEO was arrested, and Wirecard filed for bankruptcy. Following this, Anastassia resigned from her roles with EasyJet, Diligent Corporation, and NASDAQ (where she was a founding member of its Advisory Council of Next Gen Board Leaders).

Since then she has refocused, closing her consulting company. In October 2021, she was appointed Professor for AI, Data & Digital Business at MCI in Innsbruck where she taught for 3 years in parallel to working with the ExCo Group as a Mentor & Leadership Coach. In 2022, she married Thomas Lang and in 2023, she founded AI Edutainment to teach children and parents about AI and robotics.

A Fellow of the Salzburg Global Seminar, Anastassia has sat on the advisory boards of several organizations and has also served as an advisor to the UN’s International Telecommunications Union. She speaks fluent English, French, German, Russian, and Serbian and she never misses an opportunity to see a ballet or opera performance.

Anastassia was voted into the Excellence Hall of Fame by the Institute’s Fellows in recognition of her lifelong pursuit of excellence, her persistence in the search for integrity, and the example she sets for women in the boardroom.