Fatou, co-founder and Managing Partner of Bootstrap Europe, actively sources and evaluates growth companies eligible for debt financing.

Prior to Bootstrap, Fatou was a founding partner together with Stephanie of The Real Economy Effect (TREE) in 2012 where she managed private equity and venture capital portfolios (direct investments and funds) on behalf of family offices and multi-asset managers.

Fatou started her career as an investment banker at Citigroup in their London and Johannesburg offices, where she spent over five years advising European and emerging markets clients on cross border M&A, high yield debt and equity financing and leveraged buyouts.

Through Fatou’s training and experience at Citi, she solidified her understanding of complex credit structures and credit risk, multi-stakeholder debt negotiation process, intercreditor negotiations, enforcement and restructuring processes as well as recoveries in uncertain environments. Her experience includes time spent as a strategic advisor to the CEO of SFR, France’s second largest mobile operator at a time of profound shift in the telecom industry.

Fatou also spent time at Standard and Poor’s in London in the African sovereign credit ratings team, which gave her a taste for the credit underwriting craft. Fatou was part of the founding team that set up the African Risk Capacity, a $100M sovereign risk insurance facility against drought in 25 countries. The ARC represented a perfect introduction to entrepreneurship, at the crossroad of development finance, parametric insurance and cross-border company building across Africa and in the key insurance markets such as Switzerland, the UK and Bermuda.

In recent years, Fatou has also been featured on Forbes Top 100 Women in Tech in France. Fatou draws on her experiences in finance and as an entrepreneur when sharing her ideas and guidance with Bootstrap Europe’s portfolio company founders with the conviction that they make a material impact in their respective industries.

Fatou is fluent in French, English, Spanish and Wolof, and graduated from the HEC Business School in Paris where she majored with a Master’s degree in Finance and holds a BSc in Economics and Finance from the University of Calgary.