Isabelle De Voldere works as a senior economist at IDEA Consult. She has over 20 years of work experience in both academic and applied policy research. Her expertise lies in research on sectoral and regional competitiveness, industrial organisation, innovation and entrepreneurship. Isabelle collaborated and managed several research projects for clients such as the European Commission, regional and local governments, sector federations and policy institutes. In the last 10 years she has developed a particular interest in analyzing and strengthening the competitiveness of professional cultural and creative actors, including improving the framework conditions and access to finance for freelancers, micro-enterprises and other creative entrepreneurs. She was project leader of several recent European studies on the economics of cultural and creative sectors such as the “Survey on access to finance for cultural and creative sectors” (providing input to the EC and the EIF to refine the in 2016 launched CCS guarantee facility in the Creative Europe programme), "Creative Value Chains in the digital era" and "Crowdfunding: reshaping the crowd's engagement in culture". Between 2015 and 201, she provided strategic advice to the Flemish government to develop a policy framework to improve access to finance for cultural and creative actors, including access to microfinance and so-called ‘social or informal’ finance ((corporate) giving, crowdfunding, impact investing).