Petra Gippert lived in Paris and Montreal for more than ten years. As a trained IT specialist, she was a project manager for the development of life insurance systems and head of programming training. Back in Germany, she taught French at the Brandenburg School for the Blind and Visually Impaired. Most recently, she worked as a management assistant at a Catholic social welfare organization.

From January 2019 until the end of 2024, Petra Gippert worked at the office of the Mercator Institute. There. Here she was responsible for the organization of the office, the administrative handling of third-party funded projects as well as the commercial and administrative support of the management. In addition, she was in charge of all organizational processes in the institute (including their digitalization), including personnel and financial controlling, and in particular the management and coordination of the IT assistants.

At the beginning of 2025, she took on new tasks within the framework of the large BMBF-funded project Startchancen. Here she works as a project assistant and contributes her extensive experience to the organizational and administrative support of the project. In addition, Petra Gippert continues to be responsible for coordinating the Institute's IT and for financial controlling.