Michele Giddens

Michele Giddens

Michele is the CEO of Bridges, having co-founded the businesses in 2002 alongside Sir Ronald Cohen and Philip Newborough. She 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 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.