From 1989 until 2001, Kraft was a consultant and project manager at ZENIT GmbH ('Centre for Innovation and Technology') in Mülheim an der Ruhr, and was head of the local European Info Centre.

[6] After many parallel negotiations and various coalitions, Kraft was elected Minister-President of North Rhine-Westphalia on 14 July 2010 on the second ballot with a sufficient majority of votes, coming from the SPD and Alliance 90/The Greens, while the Left Party abstained.

[10] After decades of ideological rivalry in the state over the structure of secondary schools, both Kraft and Löhrmann later succeeded in negotiating a cross-party agreement with the centre-right Christian Democratic Union that is to ensure peace until 2023.

[11] Kraft got attention for a eulogy she gave after a stampede killed 21 people at the Love Parade music festival in July 2010, less than two weeks after she became state premier.

When she gave her speech at a memorial ceremony, she spoke of the hours she spent waiting to hear from her son, who was at the event, unsure if he was injured or unharmed, alive or dead.

[16][17] This vaulted Kraft into the top rank of German politicians, prompting speculation that she might be the strongest contender to lead the party against Merkel and potentially succeed her as chancellor.

[23] She headed the SPD's delegation in the energy working group and vocally defended the coal industry, which has a sizeable presence in her state; her co-chair from the CDU/CSU was Peter Altmaier.

[26] In March 2014, Kraft hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping in Duisburg as he visited the last stop on the Yuxinou Railway between Europe and Asia.

[36] Under the proposed law, Germans with untaxed wealth in Switzerland would have been able to legitimize their holdings and retain their anonymity in exchange for paying a one-off penalty charge and submitting to a future withholding tax.

[37] In 2014, Kraft rejected demands made by museum directors in North Rhine-Westphalia who sought to prevent the sale of two Andy Warhol paintings, Triple Elvis (1963) and Four Marlons (1966), by the former West LB at Christie's New York; in a letter in response to the museum directors, she held that she could not stop the sale because the paintings were not considered items of national cultural importance.

With 2014 marking the centenary of the start of World War I, Kraft inaugurated a memorial for the Armistice Day in Ablain-Saint-Nazaire alongside French President François Hollande and German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen, as well as British and Belgian officials.

[40] On 26 March 2015, Kraft joined Merkel, Hollande and Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy of Spain at the crash site of Germanwings Flight 9525 in the Massif des Trois-Évêchés for a memorial; North Rhine-Westphalia was the state where the plane was headed and many of the 144 passengers lived.

One day later, she and Germany's President Joachim Gauck attended a memorial service in the western town of Haltern for 16 students and two teachers from the local high school who were killed in the crash.