Michele Giddens

Co-CEO at Bridges Fund Management

Speaker

Michele co-founded Bridges alongside Philip Newborough and Sir Ronald Cohen in 2002 and now oversees strategy, client development, talent development, public affairs and impact management. She sits on the Investment Committee for all Bridges funds and has a key role in leading and developing Bridges’ internal team and directing the firm’s strategic growth.

Michele has played a leading role in the growth of the sustainable and impact investing sectors in the UK and worldwide. She was an adviser to the UK Treasury’s Social Investment Task Force and chaired the Community Development Finance Association from 2003-2005. She chaired the UK National Advisory Board on Impact Investing (part of the Global Social Impact Investment Steering Group) from 2016-18, chaired a Global Working Group on Policy for the G7 Impact Investment Taskforce, and sat on the BVCA Council. She served as a Non-Executive Director on the board of CDC (now BII), the UK Government’s Development Finance Institution, from 2014-2022. Michele is also a Trustee for the Bridges Impact Foundation.

Michele has over 30 years’ experience in sustainable and impact investing and international development finance, having previously worked with International Finance Corporation, the private sector financing arm of the World Bank Group, and with Shorebank Corporation, one of the leading community development banks in the USA, where she ran small business lending programmes in Russia, Central and Eastern Europe, and advised on microfinance in Bangladesh, the Middle East and Mongolia.

Michele has a BA Honours in Politics, Philosophy & Economics from Oxford University and an MBA from Georgetown University, Washington, DC. She was awarded an OBE for services to international development and social finance in the 2018 Queen’s Birthday Honours list.