Gisela Erler was born in 1946. She studied Sociology in Cologne and Munich and was engaged in the students’ and women’s movement. 1967 Co-founder of the first leftist publishing house in the FRG and the first women’s publishing house. From 1974 to 1991, she worked as a research consultant at German Youth Institute in Munich. In the early 1980s, she was a member of the market-oriented “eco-libertarian greens” and co-published the controversially discussed “Mother Manifest” of the Greens. In 1991 she founded pme Familienservice GmbH, a large provider of corporate work-life solutions. Until 2008 she was its managing director. In 2011, Winfried Kretschmann appointed her as the State Councilor for Civil Society and Civic Participation. Gisela is married and lives at Lake Constance.