Michele Giddens

Michele Giddens is an Executive Director of Bridges Community Ventures. She has ten years of development and community finance experience ranging from large equity and debt investments to microfinance and small business lending. She began her career in international economic development with the Polish Development Bank, a World Bank-sponsored institution in Warsaw. She then moved to the International Finance Corporation, the private sector finance arm of the World Bank.

Michele was at Shorebank Corporation (1994-2001), one of the leading community development banks in the USA, as Managing Director of international advisory services. During that time she worked on development finance initiatives in a dozen countries in the former Soviet Bloc, the Middle East and Asia, managing a lending programs of over $40 million to small businesses and advised on the creation of a microfinance company, Aspire Micro Loans for Business Ltd., in Northern Ireland.

In 2000, she was seconded as an advisor to the Social Investment Task Force. In April 2001, she began working on the establishment of the Bridges CDV Funds.

Michele has a BA from Oxford and an MBA from Georgetown University, Washington, DC.