Curriculum Vitae
Reto Steiner is Dean of the ZHAW School of Management and Law (Triple Crown accredited business school) and a member of the university board. Reto Steiner is also head of Degree Programs and Executive Education at ZHAW. From 2002 to 2016, Reto Steiner was a member of the executive board at the Center of Competence for Public Management at the University of Bern, and from 2016 to 2017, he was managing director of the Swiss Institute for Public Management. Reto Steiner was a contract professor for strategic management in the public sector at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano from 2016 to 2018. In 2013, Reto Steiner conducted research as a visiting research fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore (NUS) and at the Department of Politics and Public Administration at the University of Hong Kong. In 2020, Reto Steiner was a visiting professor for "Global Governance" at the University of Rome Tor Vergat
In 2022, Reto Steiner chaired the annual conference of the European Academy of Management (EURAM) on the topic of "Leading Digital Transformation." In 2028, Reto Steiner will chair the organizing committee of the colloquium of the European Group for Organizational Studies (EGOS). Since 2025, he has been vice president of the European Group for Public Administration (EGPA).
Steiner's teaching and research focuses on local and regional governance, digital transformation, the use of artificial intelligence in public administration, and public corporate governance.
Reto Steiner teaches at the University of Bern, where he is a member of the Executive MPA program management team, and at ETH Zurich. At the University of Rome Tor Vergata, Reto Steiner is a member of the Scientific Board of the PhD program. He serves on various editorial boards of academic journals and regularly chairs international scientific conferences.
Steiner has many years of experience in advising public institutions. His clients to date include the Council of Europe, the Swiss government, the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, the Federal Chancellery, and various Swiss cantonal and municipal administrations. The focus of the projects is on organizational change.
Since 2013, Reto Steiner has been the Swiss representative in the group of independent experts monitoring compliance with the European Charter of Local Self-Government at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg. In 2022, Steiner was elected as the representative of European universities to the Board of Governors of Beta Gamma Sigma (USA), the association of the best graduates in economics with over 900,000 members.
Reto Steiner also chaired the NDS Hotel Management program at Hotellerie Suisse from 2003 to 2018. From 2011 to 2017, Reto Steiner served on the school board of the Bern University of Applied Sciences, becoming vice president in 2016. From 2001 to 2019, he was a member of the board of the Swiss Society for Administrative Sciences and, from 2013 to 2022, a member of the board of directors of the International Institute for Administrative Sciences (IIAS) in Brussels, the umbrella organization for administrative sciences.
The scientist also has political experience: he was active in the legislature at the municipal and cantonal level for several years and has been president of the Reformed Church Parish of Langenthal since 2016.
Reto Steiner was included in the 2015 ranking of Switzerland's most influential economists by the Neue Zürcher Zeitung and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.