Lori Steele Contorer is the world’s top expert in election modernization, pioneering the adoption of software as a service and bringing proven state of the art technologies, already proven in other mission–critical industries, to make elections more accessible, affordable, transparent and secure. The transformation has begun, and her visionary leadership in business, innovation and elections led to Ms. Steele Contorer being named in 2013 to Fortune Magazine’s 10 Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs List, a winner of San Diego Business Journal’s Women Who Mean Business Award, and her induction into the Bowling Green State University Dallas Hamilton Entrepreneur’s Hall of Fame.

Since founding Everyone Counts Steele has led innovative election administration and voting implementations involving voters in over 165 countries including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Bosnia & Herzegovina, and Australia.

Through Lori’s leadership, Everyone Counts is disrupting the $31 billion elections industry and migrating government and private-sector elections worldwide from antiquated hardware-based and error-prone manual and paper-based processes to Everyone Counts’ software as a service (Saas) model. The company has delivered dozens of world-first innovations in election services over the past decade, included secure online ballot delivery, the first use of iPads for voting, and the largest ever online voting to-date in a government election.

Bosnia-Herzegovina provided Everyone Counts’ voting systems to citizens with disabilities in a pilot election, so that they could vote privately and independently for the first time. Everyone Counts took stewardship of the State of New Jersey’s Voter Registration System in 2013, binging state of the art technologies to voter registration. And Everyone Counts was awarded the contract to migrate the Oscars from 85 years of vote by mail to online voting for the iconic Academy Awards, resulting in their highest voter participation ever.

Lori previously served as a technology investor as Vice President at Salomon Smith Barney, specializing in emerging and state-of-the-art technologies globally. Ms. Steele’s election modernization expertise and insights is frequently called on by legislators from around the world, and the media, including Time, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, Fox, MSNBC, Politico and The New York Times.

Lori earned her Bachelor of Science in Business Administration in 1986 from Bowling Green state University.