Investment Impact
I help mission-driven organizations navigate the moments that change them.
A leadership transition. An operating model that no longer fits. A funding landscape that shifted. I have led global organizations through all three, and built practices, platforms, and revenue lines from the ground up.
The most important investments are not only financial — they are investments in people, leadership, organizations, and partnerships. These are what build impact and institutions strong enough to last.
— Michèle Olivier Laird, Founder
About
Leadership at the intersection of mission and strategy.
My career has been built at an unusual intersection: investment banking, economic policy, and more than three decades of executive leadership in global development. Across that work, I have helped organizations adapt, strengthen systems, and deliver greater impact in more than 40 countries. Often that has meant building what did not yet exist: a new practice, a new platform, a new source of revenue.
At Pact and Abt Associates, I led large, globally distributed teams through expansion, restructuring, funding transitions, and organizational reinvention. Earlier, I directed the Economic Programs department at the American Chamber of Commerce of Mexico, advised on financial and investment environments at USAID, and began my career in mergers and acquisitions and corporate finance at Dillon, Read & Co. That combination of mission leadership and commercial fluency shapes how I work. I tend to ask the practical questions underneath the mission: what are we offering and whom does it serve, what does it actually cost to deliver, and how could we work more effectively?
I am most effective during moments of inflection: leadership transition, operating model redesign, growth into unfamiliar territory, and periods when the path forward is consequential but not yet clear. These are the moments when clear priorities matter more than new initiatives, and when trust matters more than authority.
Today, through Investment Impact, I advise mission-driven organizations navigating growth, transformation, and change, helping leaders strengthen the culture, partnerships, systems, and institutional capacity required for lasting impact. I also take on interim and fractional executive roles, when an organization needs someone in the seat rather than beside it.
Areas of Focus
Where I work with organizations.
Leadership transitions and executive advisory
Your CEO is stepping down, a new executive is stepping in, or the board needs a steady hand through the change. I advise leaders and boards through transitions so that momentum, trust, and institutional knowledge survive the handover.
Organizational strategy and transformation
The funding model shifted and the operating model has not caught up. I help organizations redesign strategy, structure, and ways of working, including localization and institutional strengthening, and I stay through the change so it holds.
Growth, revenue, and capital
You need to grow, and the income to do it will not come from where it came from before. I help organizations build fee-for-service and earned revenue models, launch new practices and service lines, structure blended and innovative finance, and build partnerships across the public, private, and philanthropic sectors. I have done this as an operator, not only as an advisor.
Leadership, culture, and organizational effectiveness
The strategy is sound but the organization is not moving. I work with executive teams to build the culture, accountability, and collaboration that turn plans into results, particularly across borders and cultures.
Working together
Most engagements start with a conversation, not a proposal.
We talk about what you or your organization are actually facing. From there, engagements usually take one of a few forms.
Executive advisory.
Ongoing counsel to a CEO, an executive team, or a board, typically monthly, sometimes more or less often.
Project engagements.
A defined piece of work with a defined end: a strategy reset, an operating model redesign, a revenue diagnostic.
Building something new.
A practice, a service line, a country platform, or a function the organization does not yet have, taken from concept to up and running.
Board and governance work.
Retreats, governance reviews, and support through CEO succession.
Interim and fractional leadership.
Stepping into an executive seat while an organization searches, restructures, or builds a function it does not yet have.
I work as an individual advisor by default. When an engagement calls for more hands, or for depth in an area where someone else is the better expert, I bring in colleagues from a network I have built across more than 40 countries and stay accountable for the whole.
If you are not sure which of these you need, that is a common place to start.
A 30-minute call, no charge.
Experience
A track record of leadership at scale.
Founder & Executive Advisor
Chief Programs Officer
Regional Vice President, Europe, Asia, Latin America & Caribbean
Director, Economics Department
Investment Banker, M&A and Corporate Finance
Insights
Perspectives on leadership and organizational effectiveness.
The Ledger Nobody Keeps
What a failed 1996 Bolivian housing-finance program reveals, twenty-eight years later, about what actually builds resilient local financial institutions.
Read more →Leading Through Inflection Points
On the discipline of steady leadership during restructuring, funding pressure, and organizational change.
Read more →Culture Is a Strategy, Not a Side Effect
Why the strongest organizations treat culture as a deliberate investment, not an afterthought.
Read more →Get in Touch
Let's build what's next.
Whether you're navigating a strategic inflection point, searching for your next executive leader, or exploring a partnership — I'd welcome the conversation.
Schedule a conversation