Karin Helmstaedt was born in New Brunswick, Canada, to a Canadian mother and an East German father who fled communism shortly after the Berlin Wall was built.

She studied Physical and Health Education and Literatur at the University of Toronto, and while there, joined the Candian national swim team. She went on to be a finalist at both the Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh and the World Championships in Madrid, Spain, in 1986. A year later, she was named Canadian intercollegiate female swimmer of the year. In the early 1990s she moved to Paris to study literature at the Sorbonne, and also began working as a freelance journalist. In 1997 she coproduced a prizewinning documentary about the systematic doping that went on in communist East Germany, which was aired in ten countries. Then Karin Helmstaedt movd to Berlin and began her career as a TV host. When she's not working, she likes to spend as much time as possible with her husband and two children, she loves to cook, she enjoys being outdoors - and she's also a singer-sognwriter with her own band called "Breathe".