Lawyers play a critical role in designing, implementing, and advancing models by which economic and social activity are conducted globally. The Grunin Center administers the award of an annual Grunin Prize for Law and Social Entrepreneurship to recognize lawyers’ participation in the ways in which business is increasingly advancing the goals of sustainability and human development.
The Grunin Prize aims to reward the innovation, potential impact, and replicability and/or scalability of projects and solutions developed by lawyers to advance the fields of social entrepreneurship and impact investing.
The Grunin Center for Law and Social Entrepreneurship is made possible through a generous endowment from NYU School of Law graduates Jay Grunin ’67 and Linda Kalmanowitz Grunin ’67, and the Jay and Linda Grunin Foundation. Jay and Linda have dedicated their philanthropic endeavors to investing in innovative projects that have measurable impacts creating meaningful, transformative change.
The 2024 Grunin Prize
The 2024 Grunin Prize will be awarded at a special ceremony on June 4, 2024, in New York City. This ceremony will take place as part of the Annual Conference on Legal Issues in Social Entrepreneurship and Impact Investing—in the US and Beyond, which is co-hosted at NYU School of Law by the Grunin Center for Law and Social Entrepreneurship and the Impact Investing Legal Working Group.
The 2023 Grunin Prize attracted numerous nominations from across the globe, which were representative of the extraordinary legal community of practice that is emerging in this field. Learn more about our 2023 finalists and winner.
Grunin Prize finalists receive recognition from a global community of lawyers, academics, policymakers, and other impact professionals. Finalists are invited to participate in the annual IILWG/Grunin Center conference to showcase their projects in front of hundreds of conference attendees. Past finalists and winners have also received media exposure. The submission period for the 2024 Prize is now closed.
For any questions or concerns related to the Grunin Prize, please contact the Grunin Center at law.gruninsocent@nyu.edu.
Eligibility Criteria
The Grunin Prize is open to individual lawyers or legal teams from across the globe. Practitioners, legal educators, policymakers, in-house counsel, and other legal teams that develop an innovative social enterprise or impact investment solution using existing law, legal education, or new legal structures are eligible to apply.
- The Grunin Prize will recognize inputs, such as new uses of old laws or reframing of the conceptual framework surrounding the law, and outputs, such as the development of a new legal structure or organizational design.
- The nominated project must be completed or implemented on or before December 31, 2023. Only projects that have been completed or implemented within the past year will be considered.
- Examples of the types of legal projects that may be submitted for consideration include: innovative financing, contracting or entity structure, enacted legislation or adopted model laws, or design of new legal courses or tools.
Qualifying projects will be evaluated against the following criteria: innovation, potential impact, and replicability and/or scalability.
Timeline
- February 15, 2024: Deadline to complete submission forms.
- May 1, 2024: Finalists will be announced.
- June 3, 2024: Finalists will meet with the judging panel.
- June 4, 2024: The Grunin Prize will be awarded at a special ceremony.
Judging Panel
The screening panel is be composed of an internal prize committee that will select the finalists.
The final judging panel is composed of NYU Law representatives and industry experts who will select the Grunin Prize winner based on the submission materials, references, and a final interview.
Meet the Judging Panel below:
Deborah K. Burand
Deborah Burand is a Professor of Clinical Law at NYU Law, where she directs the International Transactions Clinic and is Faculty Director of the Grunin Center for Law and Social Entrepreneurship. She writes and lectures on issues related to international finance, microfinance and microfranchise, impact investing, and social finance innovations such as social impact bonds, social entrepreneurship, and developing sustainable businesses at the base of the economic pyramid.
During 2010-2011, Burand served as general counsel to the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, the development finance institution of the United States. Earlier in her career, she worked in the environmental sector (Conservation International), microfinance sector (FINCA International and Grameen Foundation), and US government (Federal Reserve Board and Department of the Treasury). She also has worked in private practice at a global law firm, where, among other things, she supported, on a pro bono basis, the development of the world’s first debt-for-nature swap.
Burand is a member of the board and Investment Committee of the MicroBuild Fund, an impact investment fund sponsored by Habitat for Humanity International. She is an advisor to the Linked Foundation and Social Sector Franchise Initiative. She co-founded the Impact Investing Legal Working Group (IILWG) and Women Advancing Microfinance (WAM) International.
Burand received her BA from DePauw University cum laude, and a joint degree, JD/MSFS with honors, from Georgetown University.
Jay Grunin
Jay Grunin is Co-Founder and Chairman, Jay & Linda Grunin Foundation. Jay graduated from Brooklyn College (with honors) in 1964, and from NYU School of Law in 1967, where he was an Editor of the Law Review and where he met his future wife and business partner. After a brief exposure to academia –as Research Assistant to an NYU Law professor teaching a seminar on legislative history–, as well as a brief stint in Big Law in New York, followed by a one year Appellate Division clerkship in New Jersey, Jay, who would never have to rue about the road not taken, opted to then take the advice of his lawyer-wife who implored him to “go south young man, go south”. And so Jay and Linda “hitched on to the second wagon train” and landed in a then small town on the Central Jersey Shore called Toms River.
After a few years, Jay and Linda decided to open up their own small “mom and pop” law firm. In the 1970s, as Ocean County became one of the fastest growing counties in the entire United States, Jay and Linda’s law practice flourished. At the same time, Jay and Linda expanded their business interests to include real estate and other investments.
In the 1990s, the Grunins dissolved their law practice so as to concentrate full time on their greatest passions, business investments and philanthropy. In 2013 their philanthropic endeavors were formalized with the creation of the Jay and Linda Grunin Foundation.
Helen Scott
Helen Scott is a Professor of Law Emeritus at NYU School of Law. She is the founder and former co-director of the Mitchell Jacobson Leadership Program in Law and Business at New York University School of Law, as well as a co-founder and former Faculty Co-Director of the Grunin Center for Law and Social Entrepreneurship at NYU Law. In that capacity, she has participated in the development of innovative Law and Business courses, including Investing in Microfinance, Law & Business of Corporate Governance, and Professional Responsibility in Law and Business. Scott oversees the competitive Leadership Scholars program, and runs the capstone seminar for the program, Law and Business Projects. She has been a member of the NYU School of Law faculty since 1982 and teaches a wide variety of business law courses, including the basic Contracts and Corporations courses.
Scott currently serves on the Board of Directors of IEX LLC, the newly launched stock exchange. From 1999 to 2004, Scott co-chaired the Listing and Hearing Review Council of the NASDAQ Stock Market, an independent advisory committee to the board of directors, with primary responsibility for formulating and recommending corporate governance and quantitative listing standards for that market.
In 2023, Scott was the first recipient of the Grunin Prize for Sustained Commitment for her extraordinary dedication to supporting law students who are intent on doing good within their transactional and business law practices. In 1997, Scott received the Legal Advocate of the Year award from the US Small Business Administration in recognition of her participation in the development of the Angel Capital Electronic Network (ACE-Net) project to increase financing available to early-stage entrepreneurial enterprises. Before joining the Law School faculty, Scott practiced law in Washington, DC, and New York.
Rachel Robbins
Senior Independent Director, Atlas Mara Limited
Rachel F. Robbins is currently senior independent director of Atlas Mara Limited, a UK-listed financial services company whose aim is to be the premier financial services company of Sub-Saharan Africa. She is also a Trustee of NYU School of Law and an Advisory Board member of the Grunin Center for Law and Social Entrepreneurship. She previously served as a non-executive director of FINCA Microfinance Holding Company, a global microfinance company.
From 2008 to 2012, Robbins served as vice president and general counsel of the International Finance Corporation and as a member of its Management Group. She joined the IFC with three decades of experience in legal and financial services, including extensive experience in corporate governance and in managing global teams through periods of change. Between 2006 and 2008, she was executive vice president, general counsel, and secretary of the New York Stock Exchange and NYSE Euronext. She spent 20 years at JPMorgan & Co. and was general counsel and corporate secretary from 1996 to 2001. From 2003 to 2004, she was general counsel of Citigroup International.
Robbins holds a JD from New York University School of Law and a BA in French literature from Wellesley College.
Steve Valdes-Robles
Steve Valdes-Robles works as General Counsel at WaterEquity. He previously worked as a Senior Attorney responsible for advising The Nature Conservancy, including its NatureVest unit, on impact investments and its Office of Investments on the management of TNC’s endowment. He was the lead attorney on a number of ground breaking transactions, including the Belize Blue Bond, the Cumberland Forest Project and TNC’s Green Bond.
Prior to joining TNC, he was a foreign service legal officer for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), where he completed tours in Washington, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Mozambique. At USAID, he advised on a wide range of matters, including conservation, development finance, agriculture, water and sanitation, health and education. Before USAID, he was a corporate attorney at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP where he spent time in the New York, Hong Kong, Moscow and Frankfurt offices. He also worked as an international visiting attorney at the law firm Barros Letelier y Cia in Santiago, Chile.
Steve holds a B.A. from the University of Notre Dame, a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School and is a member of the New York bar.
Amélie Baudot
Amélie Baudot is the Chief Operating Officer at International Fund for Public Interest Media and the Vice Chair of the Board of Directors at Bridges to Development. Previously she was the Chief Strategy and Chief Legal Officer of the Global Innovation Fund. Amélie is a qualified Solicitor of the Supreme Court of England and Wales and a Member of the Bar of the State of New York.
Half of Amélie's career has been spent in-house working for start-ups in the international development and impact investment space, building their legal and governance functions from scratch. Amélie began her career as a finance lawyer at Allen & Overy LLP. In that role, Amélie worked on bankruptcy cases, work-outs, court-sanctioned refinancings, and corporate reorganisations, including acting as the lead associate on the GBP 1.6 billion restructuring of a UK financial services company.
Amélie earned a Juris Doctor from New York University School of Law, a Master’s Degree in International Relations from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies and a Bachelor’s Degree from Connecticut College.