College of Performing Arts Faculty

Profile

Claude Grunitzky is the CEO and Managing Partner of the Equity Alliance, a fund dedicated to providing capital to emerging, underrepresented venture capitalists and early stage founders who are women or people of color. Claude is also the founder of two media companies focused on Black culture, TRACE (funded by Goldman Sachs and successfully sold to European investors) and TRUE Africa (funded by Google).    Claude is a Visiting Social Innovator at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Social Innovation and Change Initiative, an accelerator of positive social change that supports visionary social innovators and strengthens the ecosystems they need to thrive.   Claude was raised between Lomé, Togo; Washington; Paris; London and New York. Growing up, Claude, who speaks six languages and carries three passports, was exposed to many different cultures. These foreign interactions shaped his transcultural philosophy and informed the creative energy of his ventures.   A graduate of London University and MIT, where he earned an MBA as a Sloan Fellow, Claude is a trustee at MoMA PS1 and at MASS MoCA, two of America’s leading contemporary art museums. He is also a longtime trustee at Humanity in Action, a foundation that works internationally to build global leadership, defend democracy, protect minorities and improve human rights.