American-born, Ireland-based fund manager Faye Walsh Drouillard talks conviction, climate tech and what it takes to build an impact VC fund from scratch.
When Faye Walsh Drouillard sought out an impact-focused venture capital fund in Ireland, she looked at the market and could not find a structure that matched her vision. So she built one herself.
That instinct – to identify the gap and move – speaks to someone who has spent two decades operating at the intersection of purpose and capital. Born in Washington DC and raised in DC and California, Walsh Drouillard has lived in Europe for 20 years, 12 of them in Ireland, where she arrived initially due to her husband’s work in aircraft leasing. What began as a relocation for family reasons has, over time, become a genuine commitment to the Irish ecosystem and the founders building within it.
Her background is that of a social entrepreneur with deep roots in the nonprofit world and a long-standing preoccupation with two of the defining challenges of our time: climate change and inequality. Long before WakeUp Capital existed, she was active in angel investing, serving on non-profit boards and, increasingly, asking a question she found difficult to answer: where was the fund for founders building solutions to these problems?
