Michele Giddens

Michele Giddens

CEO & Co-Founder

Michele co-founded Bridges alongside Philip Newborough and Sir Ronald Cohen in 2002 and was Co-CEO alongside Philip Newborough from 2019-2024. Michele became CEO in summer 2024 and oversees all Bridges’ investment activity across our platform of funds, as well as strategy, operations, people and all other aspects of the business.

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 in 2000 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 was also a Trustee for the Bridges Impact Foundation from 2018-2024. She is currently on the Board of GSG Impact.

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.