Laurence Mehaignerie

Laurence Méhaignerie is the co-founder and President of Citizen Capital, one of France's pioneering impact-investing firms, which she launched in 2008 alongside Pierre-Olivier Barennes — well before "impact investing" became a mainstream category. She has roughly two decades of experience in impact and corporate social responsibility, and today oversees the firm's impact policy and measurement, public affairs, and communications. She sits on the investment committee for all Citizen Capital funds and helps drive the firm's strategic growth. Citizen Capital manages a family of funds (its Growth Fund plus vehicles dedicated to agriculture, Agri-Impact, and social impact bonds, Citizen CIS).

Before founding Citizen Capital, Méhaignerie built a career at the intersection of media, public policy, and social equity. She began as a journalist at Le Moniteur, France's leading publication for local public authorities. From 2003 she became a prominent voice in France's diversity movement: as a research fellow at the Institut Montaigne think tank, she co-authored the influential 2004 report "Les oubliés de l'égalité des chances" (with Yazid Sabeg), and co-authored and helped launch the Charte de la Diversité (Diversity Charter) in October 2004, which was signed by dozens of major corporate CEOs. She served as an advisor to the French Minister for Equal Opportunities in 2005–2006.

Beyond Citizen Capital, Méhaignerie co-founded the Communauté des entreprises à mission (Community of Mission-Driven Companies) in 2018 — the leading association supporting the "société à mission" legal status created under France's PACTE law — and sits on its board. She has also served on the supervisory board of the Ouest-France media group and on the strategic committee of Ipso Santé. French-American by background, she is a graduate of CELSA (Sorbonne) and holds a postgraduate degree (DESS) in urban planning and development.

• Invests only in companies with an ambitious, measurable social or environmental mission — impact and financial return are treated as inseparable ("Impact et rendement financier sont parfaitement conciliables").
• Deploys capital across the maturity curve, from seed to growth/development capital; the flagship Growth Fund writes €3M–€10M checks into Series B and later rounds.
• Focuses on three impact pillars: Life Essentials, Human Empowerment, and Regenerative Economy, spanning health, education/HRTech, circular economy, cleantech, mobility, and agriculture.
• Requires that impact be structurally embedded in the business model, not bolted on — Citizen Capital actively helps portfolio companies structure, measure, and monetize their impact as a source of strategic value.
• Stated conviction that "the economy must more clearly serve society" and that "the finest companies will be those that have a major impact"; she frames the recent surge of interest in impact as validation of a thesis she has held since 2008 ("Today, everyone wants to have an impact — which didn't exist ten years ago").
• Geographically anchored in France with a broader European reach.