Speaker
Steffi Kieffer
Human-AI Collaboration
For over 20 years, I’ve guided teams through technological change, combining my background in USteffi Kieffer has guided teams through complex transformation for over 20 years. With roots in UX design and Design Thinking, she brings methodological rigor to understanding how people actually work with AI—not just what the technology can do. She co-founded an AI startup in healthcare before ChatGPT existed, learning early what happens when humans work alongside AI under high-stakes conditions. Today, she specializes in the cognitive challenges of AI transformation: helping organizations scale AI capabilities without overwhelming their teams with prompt fatigue, agentic orchestration overload, and decision paralysis. Steffi is founder of The AI & Future Skills Retreat, guest lecturer for AI & Innovation at Hochschule der Bayerischen Wirtschaft (HDBW), host of the Insanely Human Podcast, co-host of Claude Code Meetup Munich, and co-author of the whitepaper „Teaming with AI.“ As a daily ice swimmer for over 850 days, she practices what she preaches about building resilience in turbulent times. X design and innovation to help organizations integrate AI in ways that work for humans, not against them.
My workshops draw from a decade of leading design thinking and innovation across industries, plus several years at the forefront of AI adoption. Long before generative AI became mainstream, I was developing conversational AI solutions for healthcare—giving me firsthand insight into both the technology’s potential and its human implications.
What makes my approach different? I practice what I teach. I’ve committed to 500 days of ice swimming, not because I love hypothermia, but because thriving with AI and diving into freezing water require the same skills: staying clear-headed under pressure and finding balance at the edge of your capabilities.
No buzzwords, no hype—just practical strategies for teams who want to make AI an asset, not a distraction.
SessionS
AI Brain Fry: Protecting Human Attention in the Age of Infinite Capability
LeanLeaderSummit 2026
AI removed the natural governor that used to protect us—typing speed, research time, the friction of creation. Now the only limit is cognitive endurance. And most of us don’t know our limits until we’ve blown past them. This keynote explores why „more productive“ often means „more drained,“ why so many of us feel like distracted babysitters instead of makers, and what the research says actually works. From the biological ceiling on deep work to the Jevons Paradox of attention, you’ll understand why AI Brain Fry is an organizational risk and how to design work that protects human judgment while still capturing AI’s value.
