Born in Hong Kong, Bonnie Chiu is an award-winning social entrepreneur, a prominent social impact and impact investing expert, and a gender equality champion. She is the Managing Director of The Social Investment Consultancy (TSIC), a global network of impact assessment and impact investing strategy experts.
Bonnie is the Co-Founder and CEO of Lensational, a company that uses photography to empower women. Bonnie has won awards for Lensational in social venture competitions all over the world, including in Amsterdam, Seoul, and Melbourne. She is also one of the 15 students endorsed by the London School of Economics for the Tier 1 Graduate Entrepreneur Visa, which will allow her to bring her social enterprise, Lensational, to Europe. Bonnie's Lensational has been featured in the Guardian, TEDx, Mashable, and the South China Morning Post.
She falls under the list of Forbes Under 30 social entrepreneurs and is a well-known supporter for gender equality, and the Lavazza Calendar featured her as the Ambassador for Sustainable Development Goal 5 – Achieve Gender Equality. She is a global citizen with origins in Hong Kong and Indonesia, and has resided in the United States, Singapore, Pakistan, Denmark, Germany, and the United Kingdom.
She is now based in London and works as a consultant for The Social Investment Consultancy, a leading social sector consultancy, where she assists organisations such as Save The Children and the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts in maximising social impact through financial sustainability. Prior to moving to London, she earned great experience in cross-sector collaboration through her varied employment experiences, which included large firms like HSBC, international NGOs like Amnesty International and Equality Now, and the government. She graduated from the Chinese University of Hong Kong with a bachelor's degree in business administration.
British Council, Save The Children, and Tata Consultancy Services are among her clientele. She has a long history in social investment, having developed a DFID-funded Investor Toolkit focusing on girls and young women, co-founded the Diversity Forum for Inclusive Social Investment, and coordinated the Women in Social Finance network. Humanity Data Systems is her most recent startup, which uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to better humanitarian aid distribution in war areas.
With an idea to equip underprivileged, marginalized women in developing countries she launched Lensational , a platform where the suppressed women can share their thoughts using media. Since its inception in 2013, the organisation, which now has a team of 120 volunteers, has taught photography to 1,000 women in 23 countries and formed collaborations with companies including Getty Images, Standard Chartered Bank, and Colgate.
Bonnie serves in strategic governance responsibilities in addition to directing organisations. She was recently appointed to the Board of LHA London, which owns 12 hostels for young people across London with a £230 million property portfolio and distributes £500k in annual funding. She is also a member of the World Benchmarking Alliance's Gender Benchmark's Expert Review Committee, a member of Big Society Capital's Women in Safe Homes Fund's Steering Group, and a Non-Executive Director of City to Sea.
She has won numerous awards for her work, including Asia21 Young Leader and the Facebook Social Entrepreneurship Award in 2019, Forbes 30 Under 30 Social Entrepreneur in Europe in 2017, the Hong Kong Youth Service Award, and Young Achiever of the Asian Women of Achievement Awards in 2016.
