Melanie Audette

Melanie Audette has spent more than a decade building the infrastructure that makes impact investing possible for foundations across the country.

As Senior Vice President at Mission Investors Exchange, the leading network connecting foundations to the tools, knowledge, and community they need to deploy capital for good, Melanie has been instrumental in building an organization that now represents more than 200 members and over $270 billion in total foundation assets. She works with foundations at every stage of their impact investing journey, helping them move from intention to implementation, and from isolated experiments to institutional practice.

Her work is both strategic and deeply practical. She co-led the development of the Community Foundation Field Guide to Impact Investing in partnership with Harvard University’s Initiative for Responsible Investment, a resource that has helped hundreds of foundations understand how to align their capital with their mission. She is a founding member of the Impact Investing Committee for the Council of Michigan Foundations and has previously served in the U.S. Foreign Service, bringing a global perspective to her work in philanthropy and impact.

Before her work at Mission Investors Exchange, Melanie held leadership roles in four membership associations and nine nonprofit organizations, giving her an unusually broad understanding of how institutions change and how communities of practice actually build momentum over time.

Melanie is a founding member of Invest for Better’s Impact Investing Committee, one of the early voices who helped shape how we think about this work and who we are building it with. We are honored to celebrate her here.