Audrey is an Associate Partner at Dalberg Global Advisor, a mission-driven strategy advisory firm focusing on sustainable impact and currently the Chair of the Board of Directors of bpost, the leading Belgian postal and e-commerce operator working with 36,000 staff worldwide. She works with clients such as NGOs, UN agencies, governments and foundations to improve education, employment, and health outcomes globally through developing, implementing, and measuring impactful strategies in support of inclusive development. Prior to joining Dalberg, Audrey worked at the venture philanthropy firm Telos Impact, and before that experience she was a consultant at McKinsey.
She is also the President of Be education, an organization supporting initiatives that contribute to improving the quality of education in Belgium. She previously was President of the Friday Group, a think tank of young Belgian talents from different professional backgrounds determined to inspire Belgian policy through diversity.
Audrey holds a MSc in Business Engineering from the Université Libre de Bruxelles (Solvay Brussels School, ULB) and a Master of Public Administration from Columbia University (School of International and Public Affairs).
When you look at the breadth and depth of today’s global challenges, from climate change to growing inequality, and the funding gap that exists to achieve critical agendas such as the SDGs, you can only conclude that there is a need to drastically optimize the way funding currently flows. I am convinced that by bringing together various profiles of funders, with different risk, impact, and financial return profiles, we’ll be able to scale the required solutions to tackle these pressing challenges.
I think we all agree that if we want to think longer-term, we must include the perspectives of the next generation, who will live with the consequences of our decisions and actions. With the Board, I’m happy to explore various ways to build channels for mutual exchange between IFB and key organizations representing that voice, such as the Friday Group, 40under40, and others.
IFB in its 2 years of existence has already done a tremendous job of federating the impact investing landscape across Belgium, building bridges, highlighting critical initiatives in the space, and celebrating success. One of the key challenges for mainstreaming impact investing is precisely the need to connect actors together, to help establish and build the impact investing market, driven by both technical knowledge and healthy enthusiasm.
If we want impact finance to flourish and achieve its goals, we need to actively dismantle the superficial dichotomy between “giving” and “investing.” Instead, we should view these as a spectrum of activities across a nuanced continuum. This approach ensures that each impact project deserving of scale can find the right mix of funding to help solve our world’s challenges.
