Laurence’s story begins far from Geneva. Early in her career, she worked with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Congo and Bosnia, then spent nearly a decade at the World Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), one of the oldest organisations dedicated to women’s leadership, before moving on to Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). Those years immersed her in intense human realities—experiences both powerful and demanding—that sharpened her understanding of complexity and deepened her sense of what solidarity truly means. Working in Eastern Europe during times of political transition, supporting the creation and strengthening of local organisations, she arrived at a conviction that has never left her: lasting change can only come from within. It rests on local ownership, on recognising the knowledge and strengths already present on the ground. One simple lesson from those years continues to guide her daily: “There are no foreigners, only new friends to meet.”

When she returned to Geneva, she brought that same philosophy with her — and applied it to a very different landscape. Sixteen years ago, she co-created Booster-Bridge, a structure offering tailored support, training, and advice to social, cultural, humanitarian, and environmental organisations. The name says it all: boost the actors, build bridges between them. She had noticed a recurring pattern — associations with wonderful ideas and insufficient structure to realise them, donor foundations eager to help but needing to see results emerge from intention. Booster-Bridge can help close that gap.

The challenges she encounters are consistent. Governance, above all, is the clear distribution of roles and responsibilities between members, volunteers, and paid staff. Without it, decision-making falters, tensions build, and good people burn out. The other major recurring roadblock is the inability to think long-term. Too many organisations plan one year at a time and struggle to define where they want to be in five. That absence of strategic vision keeps teams in a permanent state of urgency, generous people running on empty. Her role is to offer concrete tools, always anchored in each organisation’s specific reality. The reference guide she co-authored on NGO and association management has been downloaded nearly 120,000 times — a figure that speaks for itself. Geneva’s philanthropic ecosystem, she is careful to point out, is genuinely remarkable, a high concentration of foundations, private patrons, and public support that enables a rich and diverse cultural life.

But abundance does not always translate evenly. Smaller, independent, and emerging organisations often continue to operate in precarious conditions, with fragmented short-term funding. Projects that are already established, already well-known, tend to attract support more easily than experimental or inclusive initiatives. “Geneva’s cultural scene does not lack quality — it sometimes lacks visibility.” The challenge, she says, is to ensure that resources reach a greater diversity of actors. That instinct for connection also led her to co-create the first Certificate of Advanced Studies (CAS) in cultural and musical project management at the Haute école de musique de Genève, a program born from a simple observation: musicians were extraordinarily well-trained artistically, but rarely prepared for the practical realities of building a project around their art. Organising a festival, structuring an association, applying for funding — these require skills that music school training does not cover. The CAS was designed to give artists exactly those tools, and to help them turn an artistic idea into something viable and lasting.