Katherina Reiche

Katherina Reiche (born 16 July 1973) is a German manager and former politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). After receiving her Abitur in 1992, she studied chemistry at the University of Potsdam, Clarkson University in New York and the University of Turku in Finland. In 1997, she received her diploma. In 1992, Reiche was one of the founding members of the Ring Christlich-Demokratischer Studenten (Association of Christian-Democrat Students, RCDS) in Potsdam and in the same year she joined the Junge Union. Since 1996 she has also been member of the CDU. In 2000 Reiche became a member of the federal executive of the CDU and she also is part of the party's executive board in the state of Brandenburg. During the election campaign in 2002, Reiche was conscripted into the CDU/CSU's competence team by then chancellor candidate Edmund Stoiber, as an expert on women, youth and family policies. This decision was criticized by conservative circles inside the two parties, because Reiche was an unmarried mother at that point in time. From 2005 until 2009, Reiche served as deputy chairwoman of the CDU/CSU's parliamentary group, under the leadership of chairman Volker Kauder. In this capacity, she was in charge of overseeing the policy areas Education and Science as well as Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety. In the negotiations to form a coalition government following the 2009 federal elections, Reiche was part of the working group on the environment, agriculture and consumer protection, led by Ilse Aigner and Michael Kauch. In the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel, Reiche first served as Parliamentary State Secretary at the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety under successive ministers Norbert Röttgen (2009-2012) and Peter Altmaier (2012-2013) from 2009 to 2013. Following the 2013 elections, she was named Parliamentary State Secretary at the Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure, this time under the leadership of minister Alexander Dobrindt.