Suding grew up in Vechta. During highschool, she spent a year in Logan, Utah in 1993. Suding studied political science and romance studies at the University of Münster and graduated in 2003 as Magistra Artium. Already during her studies, she moved to Hamburg in 1999. After six years as freelance PR consultant, Suding moved to the Hamburg office of international consulting firm Edelman in 2011, where she advised Diageo.
Political career
Career in state politics
Suding has been a member of the FDP since 2006. Since 2008, she has been a member of the Hamburg state executive board of the party. At the 2009 German federal election she stood unsuccessfully in Hamburg Altona. In December 2010, she was nominated as the leading candidate of the FDP to the 2011 Hamburg state election. The party had failed to gain any seats in the 2004 and 2008 elections, and the polls in 2010 predicted between three and four percent. Under Suding's leadership, the FDP managed a comeback to the Bürgerschaft with 6.7% of the votes, making it the best result since 1974 and giving them nine of the 121 seats. Suding herself was elected to the constituency of Blankenese. After the state elections, her party's parliamentary group elected her as its chairwoman. In addition, she served as a member of the Budget Committee and the Audit Committee. At the national party convention of the FDP in April 2011 in Rostock, Suding was for the first time elected as a member of the federal executive board of the party under the leadership of chairman Philipp Rösler. In 2015, she was elected the party's deputy chairperson, this time under the leadership of chairman Christian Lindner. Suding was a FDP delegate to the Federal Convention for the purpose of electing the President of Germany in 2012 and 2017. In 2016, she announced that she would leave state politics and instead run for a parliamentary seat in the 2017 national elections.
Member of the German Bundestag, 2017–present
Suding has been a member of the German Bundestag since September 2017. She has since been serving as one of six deputy chairpersons of the FDP parliamentary group under the leadership of its chairman Christian Lindner, where she oversees the group's activities on education policy. She also serves as deputy chairwoman of the German-Italian Parliamentary Friendship Group. In the negotiations to form a coalition government with the Christian Democrats – both the Christian Democratic Union and the Christian Social Union in Bavaria – and the Green Party following the elections, she was part of the FDP delegation.
