Laurence M Haignerie

Laurence Méhaignerie is a French-American impact investor widely regarded as a pioneer of impact investing in France. She is a graduate of CELSA (Sorbonne) and holds a postgraduate degree (DESS) in urban planning and development. She began her career as a journalist at *Le Moniteur*, a leading French publication covering public and local authorities, before moving into public policy and social research.

From 2003 she played a prominent role in promoting diversity in France as a research fellow at the Institut Montaigne think tank, where she co-authored the influential 2004 report *"Les oubliés de l'égalité des chances"* and co-created the Diversity Charter (Charte de la diversité) in October 2004, initially signed by the CEOs of some 35 blue-chip corporations. In 2005–2006 she served as an advisor to the French Ministry in charge of equal opportunity.

In 2008 she co-founded Citizen Capital with Pierre-Olivier Barennes, becoming the first person in France to launch a dedicated impact investing fund built to deliver both financial returns and measurable social/environmental impact. As co-founder and President she oversees impact policy and measurement, public affairs, and communications, and sits on the investment committee for all of the firm's funds while driving its strategic growth. Citizen Capital is a certified B Corporation and today manages on the order of €275M.

Beyond the fund, Méhaignerie helped build the institutional scaffolding of France's mission-driven economy: she co-founded the Communauté des Entreprises à Mission (the leading association for "société à mission" companies established under the 2019 Loi Pacte) in 2018 and sits on its board. She has also served on the supervisory board of the Ouest-France group and on the strategic committee of portfolio company Ipso Santé, and brings roughly two decades of experience across impact and CSR.

• Invests in mission-driven companies — startups and growing SMEs — where impact and financial return reinforce each other; her stated conviction is that *"impact and financial return are perfectly reconcilable"* ("Impact et rendement financier sont parfaitement conciliables").
• Organizes strategy around three fundamental-needs themes: Life Essentials, Human Empowerment, and Environmental Transitions.
• Backs businesses tackling pressing social or ecological challenges: education and employability, health access, social inclusion, sustainable mobility, and the low-carbon/circular economy.
• Stages span early stage to growth, deploying growth capital rather than pure angel checks; impact is underwritten and measured as rigorously as financial performance (rigorous impact measurement is central to the firm's model).
• Says yes to teams whose social/environmental mission is structural to the business model — impact "by design," not bolted on — and that can scale that impact alongside revenue.