Rike van Kleef is a cultural professional, journalist and author with a clear compass. She initially found her professional home in the music industry, at concerts and festivals. Influenced by her own experiences of discrimination as a queer woman in a heavily male-dominated industry, she co-founded fæmm association and wrote texts on culture, feminism and discrimination. She now speaks and writes about the various intersections of social policy and culture. In 2022, she published her academic study "Wer gibt hier den Ton an. Über die Repräsentanz von Geschlecht auf deutschen Unterhaltungsmusik-Festivalbühnen." The thesis is one of the first studies on this topic in the German-speaking world and was nominated for the FHP Gender Prize. In 2023, it was honoured with the International Music Journalism Award in the category ‘Best Work Of Music Journalism, Under 30’.

Rike's debut non-fiction book ""Billige Plätze. Gender, Macht und Diskriminierung in der Musikbranche" will be published by Ventil Verlag on 30 May.