 Complete the following phrase:  Schmidt became a SPD member when she was 16. As a Juso member, she acted as an observer in the 199596 South African municipal elections. While she was preparing a PhD thesis about the history of the SPD, she was offered a job in the office of Landtag of Hesse member Andrea Ypsilanti. She continued as Ypsilantis assistant when Ypsilanti became state SPD leader, and later became an assistant to her successor, Thorsten Schäfer-Gümbel. In the 2009 and 