07 May Claude Grunitzky: Jet-Set Visionary Merging Media, Art & Capital
A Passport Stamped in Silk Ink
Lomé, Togo. Parisian lycées. London’s East End raves. New York penthouses where Basquiat once sketched on the walls. Claude Grunitzky’s childhood reads like an heirloom suitcase covered in diplomatic stickers—his father, the late finance minister Otto Grunitzky, was posted to Washington; his great-uncle Nicolas Grunitzky steered post-independence Togo as president. Those early relocations forged what he later christened transculturalism: the instinct to belong everywhere at once. WikipediaAfrik
TRUE → TRACE: The Zine That Became a Zeitgeist
London, 1995: inspired by Dazed & Confused, the 24-year-old economics student gathers £12 000, photocopies a few hundred stapled pages and names it TRUE—a fanzine splicing hip-hop bravado with Vivienne Westwood tailoring. Within a year it evolves into TRACE magazine, the first glossy to place Mary J. Blige opposite Margiela in the same breath. Wikipedia
By February 2003, Grunitzky seals a multimillion-dollar, Goldman-led deal that morphs TRACE into television, events and mobile—broadcasting urban culture to 150 countries and proving subculture can draw blue-chip capital. WikipediaWikipedia
MIT, the MBA, and Selling the Archive
After exiting TRACE in 2010, he trades SoHo lofts for Cambridge lecture halls, earning an MBA as a Sloan Fellow at MIT—“to learn how to scale narrative like software,” he quips. MIT News
TRUE Africa: Digital Salon Draped in Google Silk
Sensing Africa’s Gen-Z would skip newsstands for smartphones, Grunitzky launches TRUE Africa in 2015. Google’s Digital News Initiative bankrolls the platform, whose splashy long-reads pivot from Dakar art fairs to Nairobi fintech with Vogue-meets-Wired cadence. Wikipedia
TRUE Africa University (TAU): Couture Education, MIT-Cut
In 2021, post-pandemic ennui births TRUE Africa University—a webinar series co-curated with MIT’s Center for International Studies. Picture a virtual Hôtel Costes salon where heads of state, Afrobeats architects and climate futurists dissect sustainable development in hour-long masterclasses. Center for International StudiesMIT News
The Equity Alliance: Capital, Tailored
Luxury demands substance. In 2021, Grunitzky pairs with media titan Richard Parsons to unveil The Equity Alliance, a New York fund-of-funds directing institutional capital to women- and BIPOC-led venture firms—proof spreadsheets deserve Savile Row lining.
Boardroom Chic & Cultural Stewardship
He curates culture from the hush of museum boardrooms: elected trustee at MoMA PS1 in 2023, long-standing posts at MASS MoCA and The Watermill Center, and an advisory seat at Humanity in Action. Each role is a white-glove stage for voices the establishment once overlooked. MoMA PS1Wikipedia
A Velvet-Voiced Podcaster
Between board meetings, his baritone glides through the “Limitless Africa” podcast—translated into English, French and Portuguese—where he quizzes Nobel laureates on e-governance and Ghanaian designers on sustainable denim. TRUE Africa
Producer’s Credit: The Green Wall & Blue Carbon
His film résumé includes executive-producing The Great Green Wall (2019) and Blue Carbon (2023), environmental documentaries scored by Afro-jazz and filmed from Dakar to the Maldives. Wikipedia
Style File
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Uniform – Double-breasted grain-de-poudre suits in graphite or indigo, cut by Accra couturier Akwasi Akutu; silk pocket squares woven in Kente homage.
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Fragrance – A lab-exclusive Serge Lutens accord of kola nut, jasmine and vellum.
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Carry-On Totem – A vintage Leica-III loaded with B&W film (“Stories deserve grain,” he says).
The Next Boarding Pass
TAU eyes micro-credential diplomas; TRACE archival prints are rumoured for a Victoria & Albert retrospective; Equity Alliance is scouting a climate-tech-centred Fund II. Grunitzky’s Gulfstream is on standby—because the future, like a runway finale, never waits for a late arrival.
Written and curated by Ozzie Small
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