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. 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, devoted to bringing the best of French urban culture to New York City. Grunitzky is also a board member of
Humanity in Action, 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, 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 Watermill Center. In July 2017, he was appointed president of the organization. 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. 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 [http://cis.mit.edu. 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. 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 initiative to grow an 8,000 km natural wonder of the world across the entire width of Africa. 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 [https://equityalliance.fund, an investment fund that seeks to democratize access to capital and expand opportunities for women and people of color. == Ventures ==