Katrin Budde was born in Magdeburg in 1965. She is married and the mother of two children. After studying at the Technical University of Magdeburg, where she graduated with a degree in industrial engineering, she joined the SPD in 1989 and was a founding member of the Magdeburg city association. In 1990, she was elected as a member of the Saxony-Anhalt state parliament and remained so until October 2017. Katrin Budde served as Minister of Economics and Technology in the state from 2001-2002 and was Chairwoman of the Saxony-Anhalt SPD state parliamentary group from 2006-2016. From 2009 to 2016, she was Chairwoman of the Saxony-Anhalt SPD state association and a member of the SPD's Federal Executive Committee until 2017. Katrin Budde has been a member of the German Bundestag since 2017 and has chaired the Committee on Culture and the Media since 2018.