She has been trained in the editorial team of a regional daily newspaper and studied political sciences and adult education in Hamburg and Berlin. From 1984, she worked as an editor for the children’s aid organisation “terre des hommes” and did media work for the “Protestant Association of Churches and Missions in Germany”. In 1997, she went to South Africa as the director of the Southern Africa office of “Heinrich Böll Foundation”, a German political foundation. She returned to Germany in 2002 and joined an office community of freelance journalists and photographers in Hamburg. She does seminars for journalists from developing countries and writes on labor issues for trade union publications.