Maiken Winter was born and raised in Munich, Germany. Since childhood she has been involved in nature conservation. After her studies in biology at the University in Tübingen, Germany, she moved to the USA for her PhD. At the University of Missouri in Columbia she investigated the effects of habitat fragmentation on nesting success and distribution of grassland breeding birds.

After her PhD, Maiken Winter conducted her postdoctoral research at the University of Syracuse in NY, again focusing on grassland breeding birds. This time she investigated the effects of habitat fragmentation at a larger scale, including landscape and regional effects in birds of the northern tallgrass prairie in Minnesota and North Dakota. During her years at Cornell University, Lab of Ornithology, Maiken Winter investigated various aspects of grassland breeeding birds (for details please see her list of publications on Google Scholar). She remains active in her research by reviewing manuscripts for various ornithological journals, including Condor, Auk, Journal of Wildlife Managament, Conservation Biology.

After a training with the Climate Reality Project in 2007, Maiken Winter focused her energies on teaching the public about climate change. In 2008 she and her kids moved back to Germany to continue her work in a country, that - so she hoped - would be the tipping point for change. Since then she has given more than 200 presentations and several workshops.

In December 2012 she founded the non-for-profit organization Wissen
Leben e.V.