Executive Director, Bridges Ventures
Michele Giddens has over 15 years of international development and social finance experience. She was an Investment Officer with International Finance Corporation, the private sector financing arm of the World Bank Group in Eastern Europe in the early 1990’s, then spent 8 years with Shorebank Corporation, which was one of the leading community development banks in the USA. There she ran small business lending programmes in Russia , Central and Eastern Europe, advised on microfinance in Bangladesh, the Middle East and Mongolia and did research in the US community development finance sector. Michele is a founder and Executive Director of Bridges Ventures and focuses on strategy, investor relations, public relations and social impact assessment. Michele has a BA Honours in politics, philosophy & economics from Oxford University and an MBA from Georgetown University, Washington, DC. She is an adviser to the Social Investment Task Force, a Trustee of the Young Foundation and was Chair of the Community Development Finance Association (cdfa) 2003-2005
