With the demise of Gérard Tardy last week, the Bhutanese entrepreneurs and scholars lost one of their greatest supporters. Gérard, born in 1948, is a graduate of HEC Paris and Stanford University. With thirty-five years of experience in investment, he pioneered venture capital in Europe. He founded and managed Citicorp Venture Capital, Schroders Partenaires in Paris, and Sitka Ltd in London. In his final years, he served as a senior advisor for Merieux Equity Partners specializing in healthcare and nutrition related investments.
He and his wife Anne Tardy first visited Bhutan in 1999 but their intimate connection to Bhutan developed two years later after they met Lopen Karma Phuntsho, with whom Anne studied Tibetan. In 2005, they travelled across Bhutan with Lopen Karma and a year later asked him what they can do for Bhutan. Seeing youth unemployment as a serious emerging problem and given Gérard’s expertise in business, they initiated a business education project under the Loden Foundation, which was active for eight years by then. The Loden Entrepreneurship Programme with its business training, soft loans, monitoring, and mentoring components was launched in 2008 with a strong social focus and Gérard became one of the directors of the programme. Besides the initial funding to start the entrepreneurship programme, Gérard came with his profound knowledge and vast experience in business and worked relentlessly to train, select, mentor and support hundreds of young entrepreneurs so much so that he became a fatherly figure to most of the 320 entrepreneurs Loden supported.
With Gérard’s strong commitment to entrepreneurship coupled with Anne’s deep interest in Buddhist spirituality, they would come to Bhutan at least twice a year and travel across the country making numerous friends and visiting every entrepreneur who stood in need of their help. Despite having financial means at their disposal, Gérard and Anne would mostly stay at a friend’s place or in an average hotel with a strong inclination to use their resource to help others instead of spending it on luxury. From 2012, Gérard also provided funding for the Loden university scholarships and contributed to other organisations including VAST Bhutan, Bhutan Foundation, Ogyen Choling Foundation, and Bodhitse, often encouraging these organisations to join hands. He and Anne also extended direct support to several families and individuals in need and did all these with no expectation of any recognition or return.
Yet, Gérard’s biggest contribution would be his unwavering promotion of Bhutan, Bhutanese social entrepreneurs, and the Loden Foundation in the wider global and European business and social arena through countless emails, calls, zoom meetings, talks, and visits. In addition to making significant financial contributions, Gérard worked tirelessly to raise funds from other sources, build networks, manage programmes, prepare reports, and organize events. To this effect, Gérard along with some friends in France established the Loden Initiatives in Paris to bring together supporters in continental Europe. In addition to working as board member for the Loden Foundation, he was also on the council of Loden Tewa, a centre for social ventures launched in 2025.
Gérard was a very active and enterprising man with a strong zest to solve problems and act on the plans. Lopen Karma remembers him promptly working on the broken water channel while camping in Khotakha on a trek in 2008 and fixing a makeshift bridge during their pilgrimage to Aja Ney in 2010. He was an avid traveller, photographer, and a voracious reader covering ancient Chinese history to Bhutanese policy documents. At 77, he started learning Portugese. Above all, he was a highly positive person. At every mishap, he would remark “Good, good” and go on to fix it or move on with the least sense of annoyance. A generous, compassionate, positively driven, open-minded, and wise person, he was a true Buddhist in spirit although he did not profess to be one. His passing in the evening of 12 January 2026 is mourned by many friends around the world and he is survived by his wife, three children, many grandchildren, and numerous Bhutanese whose life he has shaped.
Courtesy of the Loden Foundation. Originally reported by Kuensel.
