I was trained in administration at the University of Osnabrueck and after graduation took up a post as secretary at the university with an interdisciplinary research group. Following three years experience as secretary there I enrolled on a course to train as a translator and interpreter at the University of Applied Sciences, Cologne. This enabled me to spend a semester in Quito, Ecuador, studying Latin American literature before graduating in 1999. I spent three years as a translator with Alpnet/SDL in Stuttgart before deciding to work in Berlin as a freelance translator of technical texts from English to German. In January 2007 I took up my post as secretary to Professor Brecht at the Humboldt University, Berlin and am looking forward to continuing working in his department.