Michele co-founded Bridges in 2002 alongside Philip Newborough and Sir Ronald Cohen. As a partner, she focuses on strategy, investor relations, public affairs and social impact assessment.

Michele has played a key role in the growth of the impact investing movement in the UK. She was an adviser to the UK Treasury’s Social Investment Task Force and chaired the Community Development Finance Association from 2003-2005. More recently, she chaired the UK National Advisory Board on Impact Investing, part of the Global Social Impact Investment Steering Group, from 2016-18. She sits on the BVCA Council, and is a Non-Executive Director on the board of CDC, the UK Government’s Development Finance Institution.

Michele has over 25 years of international development and social finance experience. She began her career with International Finance Corporation, the private sector financing arm of the World Bank Group, where she ran small business lending programmes in Russia, Central and Eastern Europe, and advised on microfinance in Bangladesh, the Middle East and Mongolia. She subsequently spent eight years with Shorebank Corporation, one of the leading community development banks in the USA.

She has a BA Honours in Politics, Philosophy & Economics from Oxford University and an MBA from Georgetown University, Washington, DC.