Michele has played a leading role in the growth of the sustainable and impact investing sector, both in the UK and globally. She was an adviser to the UK Treasury’s Social Investment Task Force in 2000, chaired the Community Development Finance Association from 2003-2005, 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, sat on the BVCA Council, and played a key role in the UK Government’s Social Impact Investment Advisory Group from 2024-25.

She also served as a Non-Executive Director on the board of CDC (now British International Investment), the UK Development Finance Institution, from 2014-2022, and was a Trustee for the Bridges Impact Foundation from 2018-2024. She currently sits 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.

He was CEO of the business from 2002 to 2024, overseeing Bridges’ investment activity across all its strategies and geographies, and personally led Bridges’ successful investments in The Gym Group, The Office Group, The Hoxton, Simply Switch and Viva Gym, among others.

In his new role as Executive Chair, Philip will continue to be involved in Bridges’ Investment Committees, while also providing strategic advice to Michele and the partners, as well as mentoring and supporting more junior members of the Bridges team.

Philip is also a regular speaker about investing for impact and the value of purpose in business.

Prior to Bridges, Philip managed two venture capital-backed businesses and a substantial pan-European business. He previously worked at Aiwa as Director and General Manager and was then appointed Managing Director of MWB Business Exchange Ltd, a serviced office provider.

Philip has a BA Honours in Economics from York University and is a qualified chartered accountant.

Elizabeth has approximately 30 years of experience in private equity and leveraged transactions across a wide range of industries and markets. Previous to Bridges, she was a Founding Senior Partner at Altus Capital Partners, a lower middle market buyout firm focused on investing in North American industrial companies poised for growth. Elizabeth led and supported a myriad of successful investments across two dedicated funds and directed the completion of strategic initiatives identified for these companies while serving as Chairman or Director on their Boards. Prior to Altus (and its predecessor fund Max Capital), Elizabeth sourced and structured leveraged loans in a wide array of industries within Bank of America, GE Capital and The Chase Manhattan Bank, where she began her career. Most of these transactions focused on growing and expanding lower middle market companies in the U.S.

Elizabeth earned a BA from S.U.N.Y. Plattsburgh with a concentration in international business and an MBA from Columbia Business School.

Brian has nearly 20 years of impact investing experience, having written the business plan for Acumen in 2000 and served until 2012 as the Chief Investment Officer, where he oversaw $55m of investments into companies that were delivering health, water, energy, and agriculture services to economic base of the pyramid in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. As CIO, he was a member of Acumen’s management team and helped build out the network of country operations that worked closely with the entrepreneurs. Brian was also a co-founding board member of the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE) and was one of the principal architects of impact management software tool, Pulse, and the Impact Reporting and Investment Standards (IRIS). Prior to Acumen Fund, Brian worked as a health care consultant at McKinsey & Company, was a lead environmental staff person at the Corporation for National Service, and has been involved in starting and advising a range of non-profit and for-profit start-ups.

Brian has an undergraduate degree from Harvard University, an MBA from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, and an MA in City & Regional Planning from the University of California at Berkeley. He also teaches social entrepreneurship to at Harvard Business School. Brian was the first impact investor to go through the Kauffman Fellows Program of the Center for Venture Education, and is a Henry Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute.