Kerstin has been working in international research cooperation with the African continent for more than 15 years. She had her first contact with international agricultural research cooperation during her doctoral studies. She then worked for more than five years in the advisory group for international agricultural research funding for the German Development Cooperation Agency gtz, now giz. The adaptation of African agriculture to climate change was one of the relevant German research funding programs to support the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), which Kerstin supported on behalf of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development.

In August 2013 she started working at the DLR Project Management Agency in the International Department with a focus on Africa. Since then she has been involved in some EU-funded research cooperation networks with African partners, advises the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) on international research cooperation in the area of land management, IPBES and adaptation to climate change. Furthermore, Kerstin is currently the contact person at DLR-PT for the international department of the BMBF for research cooperation with the Republic of South Africa. She is an alumnus of the University of Bonn and holds a PhD in agricultural sciences. For her doctoral thesis, she conducted molecular biological work on systemic induced resistance to the root-knot nematode Meloidogyne incognita on tomato.