Claude Grunitzky (born February 28, 1971) is a journalist, editor and entrepreneur. A graduate of the University of London and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he is best known as founder and editor-in-chief of the lifestyle publication TRACE, an international fashion and music title, and as a co-founder of the TRACE TV network. He runs TRUE Africa, a media platform championing young African voices; TRUE, a content marketing agency; and The Equity Alliance, an investment fund focused on diverse venture capital fund managers and entrepreneurs. He also presents the podcast series Limitless Africa. In 2012, Grunitzky's career was the subject of a Harvard Business School case study,[1] which is taught in the "Power & Influence" MBA class.
Grunitzky was born in and grew up in the Togolese capital of Lomé. His greatuncle was Nicolas Grunitzky, former president of Togo. His paternal great-grandfather was Polish hence his surname.[2][3] When Grunitzky was eight years old, his family left Togo for the United States, where his father had been appointed ambassador to Washington. Four years later, Grunitzky moved to France to study at the Catholic boarding school College de Juilly and, later, at the Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris Sciences-Po.
At the age of 20, Grunitzky moved to London after a year at Sciences Po, to pursue studies in economics at London University. It was there that he embarked on his career in journalism, meeting Jefferson Hack and writing for Dazed & Confused, The Big Issue and The Guardian. In 1995, at the age of 24, he launched TRUE magazine, which met with immediate critical success and was renamed TRACE a year later. In 1998, he uprooted to New York and oversaw the magazine as it carved a niche for itself in the world of independent publishing, with its own distinctive brand of transcultural reportage. As the magazine grew in influence, he co-founded TRUE Agency, a specialized advertising agency based in New York and Los Angeles. In February 2003, Grunitzky and business partners Richard Wayner and Olivier Laouchez completed a multimillion-dollar financing deal led by Goldman Sachs Group. As a result, the TRACE brand is now being leveraged globally across various television, mobile, event and interactive platforms.
Grunitzky, a frequent contributor to the French weekly “Courrier International,” has worked as an associate producer on the BBC’s “The Works” series. He currently advises global corporations and governments in the fields of digital innovation and content strategy. In 2008, Grunitzky co-curated, with the cultural services of the French Embassy in the United States, the “I Kiffe NY” festival,[4] devoted to bringing the best of French urban culture to New York City. Grunitzky is also a board member of Humanity in Action,[5] a non-profit organization which works to build global leadership, defend democracy, protect minorities and improve human rights in Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, and the United States. In December 2013, Grunitzky became a director at the World Policy Institute,[6] a non-partisan source of informed policy leadership. In January 2015, Grunitzky was elected to the board of trustees of avant-garde theater director Robert Wilson's [7] Watermill Center.[8] In July 2017, he was appointed president of the organization.[9] In September 2016, Grunitzky was appointed Visiting Social Innovator at Harvard Kennedy School's Social Innovation + Change Initiative.[10] In February 2017, Grunitzky was elected to the board of trustees of Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA), one of the world's liveliest centers for making and enjoying today's most evocative art.[11] In February 2023, Grunitzky was elected to the board of trustees of MoMA PS1, a contemporary museum in New York City that presents some of today's most experimental, thought-provoking art.
As a Sloan Fellow at the MIT Sloan School of Management in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Grunitzky earned an MBA. In November 2011, he was appointed a lecturer on "Thought Leadership" during MIT's Sloan Innovation Period. In September 2015, he officially announced the launch of his new venture, TRUE Africa TRUE Africa | The Future Now. Non-Stop.. In March 2021, Grunitzky launched TRUE Africa University with the support of the MIT Center for International Studies . TRUE Africa University aims to become a Pan-African learning community committed to accelerating Africa’s sustainable development by mobilizing a global network of academic, industrial and institutional partners.
From 2017 to 2019, Grunitzky was the President of the Byrd Hoffman Water Mill Foundation, which operates The Watermill Center, an international center for the arts and humanities founded by Robert Wilson in 1991 on Long Island, New York.[9] In 2019, Grunitzky was an Executive Producer, alongside Fernando Meirelles and the United Nations, of the feature-length documentary The Great Green Wall, about the African-led initiave to grow an 8,000km natural wonder of the world across the entire width of Africa.[12] In 2023, Grunitzky was an Executive Producer of another environmental documentary, Blue Carbon bringing together music and science to uncover new ways of listening to nature.
In 2021, seeking a solution to help address some of the systemic inequalities and injustices laid bare by the pandemic and racial justice movement in America, Grunitzky partnered with Richard Parsons (businessman) and some of New York's most successful entrepreneurs and investors to launch The Equity Alliance , an investment fund that seeks to democratize access to capital and expand opportunities for women and people of color.
Ventures
TRACE Magazine
Born out of the short-lived TRUE magazine, TRACE was started by Grunitzky in London in 1996. Beginning life as predominantly an urban culture magazine, TRACE’s identity was quickly influenced by Grunitzky’s nascent interest in what he termed ‘transculturalism’ – a phenomenon referring to those individuals who, in their lifestyles, transcend all traditional sociological notions of race, class or gender.[13][14] Although the magazine's front pages continued to feature stellar figures from the hip hop and R&B scenes, including Alicia Keys, Mary J. Blige and Rihanna, the establishment of ‘country themed’ issues, beginning with ‘Brasil 2000’, marked a clear step in the direction of an explicitly international approach to popular culture.
TRUE Agency In 2002, Grunitzky co-founded the TRUE, Agency, a marketing agency based in Los Angeles, in partnership with business partner Richard Wayner and the TBWA\Worldwide group.[15] The agency currently operates out of London, Paris and New York.
TRACE Television In 2003, Grunitzky also launched TRACE TV, the world's first global urban music channel, with Richard Wayner and Olivier Laouchez, in partnership with Goldman Sachs and Groupe Lagardère. TRACE TV, which is now broadcast in over 150 countries, was successfully sold to European investors in July 2010, ending Grunitzky's involvement with the company.
TRUE Africa Launched in September 2015, TRUE Africa is a media-tech platform focused on the next thinking on culture, music, sports, lifestyle, politics, fashion and tech in Africa and the diaspora. Grunitzky has stated that TRUE Africa's editors want to discover and champion young African voices all over the world. In 2017, TRUE Africa secured funding from Google's Digital News Initiative,[16] which supports innovation in journalism.
Limitless Africa
Limitless Africa is a new podcast series which asks the questions that matter to Africa. Presented by Claude Grunitzky, it will be broadcast on radio stations around the African continent. Each episode is translated into English, French, Portuguese and some in Kinyarwanda. Find Limitless Africa on your favourite podcast platform.
With Liz Farrelly: Jam: Music + Style, London, Booth-Clibborn, 1996
Transculturalism: How The World Is Coming Together, New York, powerHouse, 2004 [19]
With Steven Psyllos: 10 Years of TRACE, New York, London, Booth-Clibborn/Abrams, 2007 [20]
Transculturalismes: Essais, récits et entretiens, Paris, Grasset, 2008 [21]
Related Research Articles
AllianceBernstein Holding L.P.(AB) is a global asset management firm providing investment management and research services worldwide to institutional, high-net-worth and retail investors.
Wilhelmina International Inc., formerly Wilhelmina Models, is a modeling and talent agency headquartered in New York City, United States. The company also has offices in Los Angeles, Chicago and Miami. Founded in 1967 by Wilhelmina Cooper, it provides representation and management to models, entertainers, artists, musicians, and athletes. In 2009, the company became the first and only publicly traded modeling and talent agency after its acquisition by New Century Equity Holdings Corp.
Kenneth Lerer is an American businessman and a media executive. He was the chairman and co-founder of The Huffington Post, an American news website acquired by Aol in 2011. He is also a managing director of Lerer Hippeau, and chairman of Betaworks and BuzzFeed.
The Abraaj Group was a private equity firm operating in six continents that is currently in liquidation due to accusations of fraud. The firm was founded by Pakistani businessman Arif Naqvi and was based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
Legatum Limited, also known as Legatum, is a private investment firm, headquartered in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Legatum is a partnership that uses its own funds to invest globally. The firm also invests in activities to promote entrepreneurship and free enterprise as well as anti-slavery, health and education initiatives.
Trace is a quarterly, internationally distributed magazine with the tagline, "transcultural styles + ideas". It focuses on urban culture. It was founded in 1996 by Claude Grunitzky and sold to Alliance Trace Media in 2003.
Self Help Africa is an international charity that promotes and implements long-term rural development projects in Africa. Self Help Africa merged with Gorta in July 2014, and in 2021 merged with UK-based INGO, United Purpose. The organisation also owns a number of social enterprise subsidiaries - Cumo Microfinance, TruTrade and Partner Africa.
Mona K. Sutphen was the White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy in the Obama administration from 2009 to 2011. She is currently a partner and Head of Investment Strategies at The Vistria Group, a Chicago-based private equity firm founded by Marty Nesbitt and Kip Kirkpatrick. From 2013 to 2019, she was a partner in Macro Advisory Partners LLP and from 2011 to 2013 was a managing director at UBS AG, covering geopolitical risk, macro-policy trends and their impact on the global economy. She held a diplomatic position in the National Security Council during the Clinton Administration.
Partners Group Holding AG is a Swiss-based global private equity firm with US$147 billion in assets under management in private equity, private infrastructure, private real estate and private debt.
Eric Hippeau is a partner at Lerer Hippeau Ventures in New York City.
The Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST) is an Africa-wide technology entrepreneur training program, seed fund, and incubator headquartered in Accra, Ghana. The three-phased institution was founded in 2008 to provide training, investment, and mentoring for aspiring technology entrepreneurs with the goal of creating globally successful companies that create wealth and jobs locally in Africa.
Mitchell J. Blutt is an American physician-businessman. He is one of the first physicians to play a prominent role on Wall Street by drawing on his medical training to identify investment potential in healthcare companies. He is the founder and CEO of the New York-based healthcare investment firm Consonance Capital and a former Executive Partner of J.P. Morgan Partners. He is also a Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Department of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine and the Graduate School of Medical Sciences of Cornell University.
Columbia Global Centers are research outposts established by Columbia University in different locations around the world, as part of its initiative to further establish an international research university. The first of these centers opened in March 2009 in Beijing, China, and Amman, Jordan, and Columbia opened facilities in Paris, France, and Mumbai, India, in March 2010 and Istanbul, Turkey in November 2011. Locations in Nairobi, Rio de Janeiro and Santiago de Chile were opened in 2012 and 2013. An additional location in Tunis opened in 2018.
Manoj Bhargava is an Indian American businessman and philanthropist. He is the founder and CEO of Innovations Ventures LLC, the company known for producing the 5-hour Energy drink. By 2012, the brand had grown to do an estimated $1 billion in sales. In 2015, Bhargava pledged 99% of his net worth to improving the well-being of the world's less fortunate. In 2023, Bhargava was named interim chief executive of Sports Illustrated magazine after the removal of Ross Levinsohn.
Jean-Claude Bastos de Morais is a Swiss-Angolan entrepreneur who has founded and led several businesses over the course of his career. Among these are Quantum Global Group, an international investment group with a particular focus on Africa and Banco Kwanza Invest, Angola's first investment bank.
The 1963 Togolese coup d'état was a military coup that occurred in the West African country of Togo on 13 January 1963. The coup leaders — notably Emmanuel Bodjollé, Étienne Eyadéma and Kléber Dadjo — took over government buildings, arrested most of the cabinet, and assassinated Togo's first president, Sylvanus Olympio, outside the American embassy in Lomé. The coup leaders quickly brought Nicolas Grunitzky and Antoine Meatchi, both of whom were exiled political opponents of Olympio, together to form a new government.
Joël André Ornstein, a French-born financier. He is the Chairman, Managing Partner and co-founder of Monument Capital Group Holdings LLC, a private equity investment firm. He has been based for long periods in New York where he started his career as an investment banker in the early 1980s. He has worked in alternative and private equity investing since 1989 when he established Majorn Corp., as a joint venture partner of The Carlyle Group and Euris-Rallye group.
Christopher Fabian is a technologist who works for UNICEF. He founded technology and finance initiatives in both the public and private sector, including the creation in 2006, of UNICEF's Innovation Unit.
OwnLocal is an Austin, Texas-based digital advertising startup founded in 2010.
Chukwuemeka Fred Agbata Jnr. also known as CFA is a Nigerian journalist and a former television presenter at Channels TV. He is into digital marketing and known as a technology entrepreneur with focus on business coaching and public speaking. He hosted the first virtual telehealth conference of Nigeria’s telemedicine company, CareClick with the theme ‘The Future Of Healthcare Today’ on 24 September 2020. He was involved in various ICT-related companies that contributed to the development of the Founder Institute. He is known as the founder of Pacer Venture and has links with Climate Action Africa. He is the MD/CEO of Anambra State ICT Agency.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
