Caroline Bernadi
Head of Innovative Financing
Caroline Bernadi is the Head of Innovative Financing at Village Enterprise, where she has focused since 2022 on mobilizing results-based and other catalytic financing to end extreme poverty in rural Africa. An innovative finance and development practitioner with nearly two decades of experience, she has played a leading role in structuring outcomes-based initiatives, including the Village Enterprise Development Impact Bond—the first in poverty alleviation in Africa—and other pay-for-results mechanisms that link funding to measurable impact.
Caroline joined Village Enterprise in 2005 and has helped shape the organization’s fundraising and partnership strategy, working closely with private and public institutions to mobilize capital for evidence-based solutions at scale. Her expertise spans results-based financing, blended finance, investment structuring, and outcomes funds, and she is deeply passionate about building funding mechanisms that reward real, sustained impact.
Prior to Village Enterprise, Caroline worked in operations and finance at L’Oréal and Cartier in France and co-founded Maatiam (formerly Freepledge), a social venture linking consumer spending with social impact. She holds an MS in Industrial Management from École des Mines (France) and completed the Impact Finance Innovations Executive Program (2025) at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford.
