Today we’d like to introduce you to Allison Steinke.
Hi Allison, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
The sun was beating down outside Tegucigalpa, Honduras, when our car came to a sudden halt. It was a high-risk assignment: I was a journalist on assignment to investigate drug and sex trafficking rescue operations in Latin America while co-leading a team installing clean water systems in one of Honduras’s remote villages. On this day in 2013, Honduras was ranked as one of the most dangerous countries in the world–in 2012, Honduras had more homicides than any other year on record to date. Just hours before our flight, the U.S. Department of State had elevated the tourist travel advisory to red due to escalating gang violence. My team and I decided to go anyway.
Now, after making it through customs and getting my team settled in the village where we’d be helping install a clean water system, I was sitting at a military checkpoint on the way to a safe house for trafficking survivors. I looked to my right and I found myself staring down the barrels of machine guns pointed directly into our vehicle.
Our escort let us know if this happened to stay silent and let the driver do the talking, so I kept my mouth shut. Our driver talked back and forth with the police, exchanged documents, and made gestures toward us. After what seemed like hours, we made it safely through the checkpoint.
When we arrived at the safe house, my interviews with the director and teen survivors crystallized my life’s work. My purpose in life was to share stories and testimonies that encourage others with empathy, resilience, and hope.
I returned to the remote village to complete the installation of the water system and, 10 days later, returned home safely with my team. I published my story (“The Hope Dealers of Honduras,” Christianity Today), and remembered what the director of the Medill School of Journalism had told me during my master’s degree: “Find out what you’re afraid of, and go live there.”
Today, as a Teaching Assistant Professor and Leader of the Brand Thinking Initiative at the University of Minnesota’s Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication, I bring that same optimistic focus to the classes that I teach and to the research projects that I lead.
As an award winning scholar, published author, professor, consultant, and former magazine editor, my career combines the innovative world of digital media production with academic rigor. I’m a pastor’s wife, mom, daughter, sister, and friend. I’m a breast cancer survivor. I follow Jesus, who makes it possible for me to love God and love others. As St. Irenaeus said, “The glory of God is man fully alive.” It is my goal to live life to the fullest, because every day is a gift.
This past year, I published my first book, Brand Thinking: Building Brands You Can Believe In (Bloomsbury Academic, 2025), which is also available globally as an audiobook. I teach hundreds of undergraduate and graduate students every semester in courses ranging from branding to social and digital media. I run “A Daily Miracle” (adailymiracle.com), which documents my journey through breast cancer survivorship and ovarian cancer previvorship. I’m an American Cancer Society Portraits of Hope Ambassador, and I ride the waves of digital innovation. Hopefully someday I’ll surf for real!
The Pop Quiz That Changed Everything
In 2016, I was living in Chicago, working as Wheaton College’s alumni magazine editor and teaching journalism part-time after earning my master’s from Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism. During a weekend visit to Minneapolis, my younger sister—who was then an undergraduate Strategic Communication major at UMN—invited me to sit in on one of her massive lectures just for fun.
Unannounced, the professor handed out a pop quiz on media ethics. Sitting in the back of the lecture hall, I filled out the quiz for kicks, left it anonymous, and handed it to the teaching assistants on my way out. When the TAs began frantically trying to identify the missing name on the paper so the student wouldn’t fail, I made sure to stop back inside to clear up the confusion: “I’m just visiting my sister from Chicago! Great class, you can throw my quiz away.”
The professor stopped me in my tracks, asked about my background, and asked if I’d ever considered a Ph.D. He handed me a Hubbard School Graduate School packet on the spot. “I think you should consider a Ph.D.,” he told me, “and I think you should do it here.”
I applied, was accepted, moved back to Minnesota in 2017, earned my doctorate in mass communication, and joined the Hubbard School’s faculty full-time upon graduation.
Riding Digital Waves & Experiential Learning Pedagogy
Before stepping into academia full time, I was in the trenches of digital innovation. Raised on early internet platforms like Napster and Kazaa, I launched a blog covering religion and pop culture for the Chicago Tribune’s ChicagoNow network early in my career. The ChicagoNow initiative expanded across 200 local bloggers and landed me my first major editing role, where my publisher valued my ability to blend narrative voice with analytics and brand strategy. The ChicagoNow website shut down in 2022, and I spun off all of my content into its own brand, “A Daily Miracle” (adailymiracle.com).
Later, during the initial tablet boom, I worked alongside developers to design interactive newsstand magazines for the iPad. While those early digital formats eventually gave way to mobile-first web optimization, the lesson stuck: In media, survival requires riding the waves of technological change rather than resisting them.
That adaptability shapes my teaching philosophy today. I prioritize blending theory with real-world application, centering student presentations and structured peer feedback so students can co-create the modern media landscape rather than passively consume it.
I instruct hundreds of students across the University of Minnesota system each semester, developing curriculum ranging from introductory digital media and gaming to advanced Professional Master’s seminars.
In my classes, students master enterprise-grade software and production hardware. They conduct data-driven social listening, publish blogs, and produce professional podcasts, videos, and infographics. My students use professional cameras, gimbals, and lighting rigs to execute high-end product shoots, building concrete web portfolios using content management systems, HTML/CSS, and multi-channel distribution strategies across TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, and X. Students also earn industry-leading credentials from Hootsuite and Google Analytics.
As generative AI disrupts strategic communication, I proactively lead my students toward advanced AI literacy, incorporating Generative, Answer, and Search Engine Optimization (GEO/AEO/SEO) best practices. Partnering with industry leaders in these categories helps bring thought leadership and best practices directly into the classroom, and helps students better understand copyright law, trademark considerations, and the environmental and labor impacts of AI infrastructure.
Students utilize UMN-supported LLMs with enterprise data protections—including Microsoft Copilot, Adobe Firefly, Gemini, and NotebookLM—to generate multimedia assets. For every submission, students submit disclosure statements analyzing their prompt engineering processes—or their conscious decision to keep AI out of their creative process. To keep my own skills sharp, I hold several industry certifications and present my original research at academic and industry conferences regularly, including the International Communication Association (ICA), International Association of Business Communicators (IABC), Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC), and the Arthur W. Page Society’s Think Thursday.
Supported by the Brandt Fund for Brand Thinking Studies at the University of Minnesota, our Brand Thinking research is evolving from our book publication to production of a metric that will quantify believability. We’ve interviewed chief marketing officers, held focus groups with consumers, and look forward to launching an industry-wide survey to pinpoint what brand believability is exactly in the eyes of industry executives and consumers. I also look forward to launching a brand believability podcast.
A Legacy Grounded in Resilience, Community, and Scholarly Impact
Underpinning my academic, strategic, and leadership milestones is a personal story of resilience. In 2019, at age 30, my twin sister and I were diagnosed with breast cancer at the exact same time. We underwent treatment together at Mayo Clinic in Rochester and are now celebrating 6 years in remission.
Navigating cancer treatment, surviving a global pandemic, giving birth to my son, and completing a rigorous Ph.D. program all unfolded simultaneously. I joke that while most doctoral students finish their degree in four years, my “trifecta” of life events pushed me to five—yet I crossed the finish line without missing a beat.
My dissertation covered solutions journalism—a type of journalism dedicated to investigating how communities respond to systemic social problems. To date, my peer-reviewed research has accrued 184 citations across books, articles, encyclopedia entries, and my dissertation.
A career highlight came in 2023, when my dissertation, “The Institutionalization of Solutions Journalism,” received the International Communication Association (ICA) Journalism Studies Division’s Top Dissertation Award in Toronto, Canada. The award committee noted that my work “engages with an essential aspect of journalism: its perpetual renewal… Dr. Steinke’s work will undoubtedly have a significant impact and deserves recognition for what the committee expects will be a lasting contribution to the field.”
My commitment to service extends into the wider community as well. My husband is a music producer and associate pastor at Maple Plain Community Church, where I regularly play instruments and sing on the worship team, volunteer by programming and running live audio and video mixes for house and livestream broadcasts, and regularly teach Bible studies and Children’s Church.
My son is four years old and is a bundle of joy and energy. My twin sister is a lawyer, my baby sister and mom are entrepreneurs and founders of Toffee by Jane (toffeebyjane.com), and my dad is a business and community leader who inspires me to see the glass as half full.
As a breast cancer survivor, I serve as a media ambassador for the American Cancer Society’s Portraits of Hope campaign, making media appearances and producing digital content and livestreams to support regional philanthropic fundraising.
Life is hard, but there is always hope in Jesus. As I wrote in my dissertation dedication, Romans 5:3-5 says:
“Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.”
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I’m a worship leader and licensed songwriter with BMI. I traveled to Nashville, Tennessee, with my husband, Chris Steinke, and we produced and recorded an album: Through the Valley, which is available to stream on Spotify and everywhere else music is sold. We have other singles available on Spotify too, including “Behold Our King” and “Go Tell it On the Mountain.” I’ve played piano since I was 5 years old, saxophone since 5th grade, and picked up guitar, bass, synth, ukulele, mandolin, and drums/cajon along the way! I love writing and producing and playing music and my claim to fame was facilitating a fan meet-and-greet for Justin Bieber in 2009 while I was an intern for Dave Ryan in the Morning at KDWB-FM.
What sort of changes are you expecting over the next 5-10 years?
As generative AI disrupts strategic communication, I proactively lead my students toward advanced AI literacy, incorporating Generative, Answer, and Search Engine Optimization (GEO/AEO/SEO) best practices. Partnering with industry leaders in these categories helps bring thought leadership and best practices directly into the classroom, and helps students better understand copyright law, trademark considerations, and the environmental and labor impacts of AI infrastructure.
Students utilize UMN-supported LLMs with enterprise data protections—including Microsoft Copilot, Adobe Firefly, Gemini, and NotebookLM—to generate multimedia assets. For every submission, students submit disclosure statements analyzing their prompt engineering processes—or their conscious decision to keep AI out of their creative process. To keep my own skills sharp, I hold several industry certifications and present my original research at academic and industry conferences regularly, including the International Communication Association (ICA), International Association of Business Communicators (IABC), Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC), and the Arthur W. Page Society’s Think Thursday.
Supported by the Brandt Fund for Brand Thinking Studies at the University of Minnesota, our Brand Thinking research is evolving from our book publication to production of a metric that will quantify believability. We’ve interviewed chief marketing officers, held focus groups with consumers, and look forward to launching an industry-wide survey to pinpoint what brand believability is exactly in the eyes of industry executives and consumers.
These things are what’s coming and I know that purpose-driven brand communication will be of the utmost importance as we head into the future.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://ajsteinke.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ajsteinkephd/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ajsteinkephd
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ajsteinkephd/
- Twitter: https://x.com/ajsteinkephd
- Other: https://adailymiracle.com
