Representative Bridget Burkhardt

Bridget Burkhardt of South Burlington was born and raised in rural central Illinois. She attended Brown University where she earned a BA in Business Economics and Russian Language and Literature. She began a career in finance as a financial analyst in the healthcare investment banking group of PaineWebber in New York City before moving to a small private equity firm that invested in healthcare services businesses. She continued to work part-time while attending Harvard Business School where she earned an MBA. While living in New York, Bridget reconnected with her high school sweetheart and followed him to London for his job. While searching for a job in London, she connected with a start-up, mission-driven investment management firm that was founded to invest in businesses in economically deprived areas of England. Seeing a chance to put her finance skills to work in a way that better aligned with her values, she spent months convincing Bridges Community Ventures to let her join their team. After moving back to the U.S. a few years later, she went to work for ShoreBank International as a consultant to financial institutions like microfinance and small business lenders in Africa, Asia, and South America. Bridget’s husband had graduated from Middlebury and had always dreamed of raising a family in Vermont. Not long after their first son was born, he received a job offer from Champlain College, and the family moved to South Burlington. Bridget continued to work remotely until her second son was born three years later and she took a career break to focus on her children. Three years after that she ran for the South Burlington School Board and served three terms from 2016–2022. Looking to reenter the workforce in 2022, Bridget took a job with a fund that Bridges had raised in the U.S. She spent two and a half years assisting the CEOs and CFOs of the portfolio companies with strategic planning, financial management, and budgeting while managing compliance and investor relations for the fund itself. As the fund wound down its portfolio, and the conversation about education finance reform gained momentum in Vermont, Bridget decided to run for the House.