Grunin Prize for Law and Social Entrepreneurship

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 Grunin Prize for Law and Social Entrepreneurship to celebrate the contributions of lawyers who purposefully engage in advancing the fields of social entrepreneurship, impact investing, and sustainable development.

The award of an annual Grunin Prize for Law and Social Entrepreneurship recognizes lawyers’ participation in the ways in which business is increasingly advancing the goals of sustainability and human development. This 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, impact investing and sustainable development. 

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.

Grunin Prize Finalists

Learn more about the 2026 Grunin Prize Finalists below. The winner of the Grunin Prize will be announced on the evening of June 2 at the 2026 Annual Conference on Legal Issues in Social Entrepreneurship and Impact Investing – in the US and Beyond.

Boston Impact Initiative Fund II

Nominated Legal Team:

Morgan Lewis: 

• Carl Valenstein
• Tomer Inbar 
• Joy Harrison

 

Boston Impact Initiative Team:

• Betty Francisco 
• Aliana Pineiro 
• Henry Noel
• Lubna Maria Elia

The Project:

Boston Impact Initiative (BII) is a nonprofit impact investment fund and certified Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI). It recently closed its Fund II on December 31, 2025 – this fund is a $22M fund that democratizes investment via a tiered note structure. It allows non-accredited individuals to invest $1,000 alongside accredited investors, and created a structure whereby these unaccredited investors were senior to the accredited, despite assuming less risk, and thereby turning the waterfall and risk ladder on its head. Fund II closed with commitments from a mix of nearly 240 non-accredited and accredited investors across 24 states in the United States, including individuals, donor-advised funds, nonprofits, foundations, faith-based organizations, and impact funds. This democratized approach to investing allowed investments ranging in size from $1,000 to $1 million. The fund was originally set at $20 million and oversubscribed by 10% at over $22 million. This structure and BII’s commitment to inclusion makes it worthy of the Grunin Prize. BII is committed to building an investor base that mirrors the communities it serves. Unlike conventional impact funds that limit participation to wealthy accredited investors, Fund II welcomed community members investing along institutional investors committing millions. BII’s goal was to attract values-aligned investors who recognized that building an equitable economy requires moving capital differently. This approach to democratizing impact investing has been so well received by the community, and 30% of Fund II investors are returning from Fund I. Fund II invests in social enterprises advancing inclusion, climate resilience, and worker power, plus community-owned and controlled real estate in New England. BII’s integrated capital model blends debt financing with flexible loan terms, patient non-extractive equity for long-term growth, and grants for capacity building and technical assistance. This approach recognizes that early-stage, mission-driven enterprises require different forms of capital at different stages, and that community wealth building cannot rely on extractive models the prioritize financial returns over community impact.

Climate Contracting in Action

Nominated Legal Team:

The Chancery Lane Project:

• Humzah Khan
• Guillermo Miranda Garcia

The Project:

Climate Contracting in Action is a free, global e-learning training programme designed to equip lawyers and business professionals with practical tools to address climate risk and decarbonisation through everyday legal practice. Developed by The Chancery Lane Project with support from partner law firms and foundation, the programme translates climate law, governance and contracting into practical decision-making for lawyers advising businesses. The course consists of six interactive modules combining short explainers, simulations and applied exercises. Participants learn how climate considerations intersect with corporate governance, supply chains, financial risk and contractual relationships. The aim is not only to build awareness of climate issues, but to equip legal professionals with concrete tools to integrate climate considerations into their existing workflows. The programme was developed through a practitioner-led process. Lawyers identified key gaps in climate-related legal training and worked alongside a freelance learning expert and content developer to translate legal expertise into an effective digital learning experience. The course was piloted with partner organisations across multiple jurisdictions, and feedback from early participants is currently informing a forthcoming Version 2. Since launch, the programme has attracted more than 500 active learners, including lawyers, in-house counsel and professionals working in procurement, sustainability and governance roles. Because the course focuses on transferable legal principles rather than jurisdiction-specific regulation, it can be applied across different legal systems and professional contexts. What makes the project particularly relevant to the Grunin Prize is its focus on empowering lawyers as agents of systemic change. Rather than treating sustainability as a specialist or advisory niche, the programme seeks to embed climate competence into mainstream corporate legal practice, enabling lawyers to address climate-related risks and opportunities through the everyday tools of their profession.

Integrating social impact into public asset management

Nominated Legal Team:

Cottino Social Impact Campus

• Emiliano Giovine, Lawyer and Scientific Director of the Legal Impact Pillar
• Marella Caramazza, Board Member

The Project:

The project develops and tests an innovative legal and decision-making framework to integrate social impact into the management and valorization of public real estate, addressing a structural challenge faced by many cities: how to regenerate underused public assets while ensuring that public value, not only financial return, guides decision-making. In most urban regeneration processes, public property is allocated or transformed primarily according to market-based valuation and financial performance criteria. While economically rational, this approach often prevents public administrations from supporting initiatives capable of generating significant social and environmental benefits when those benefits cannot be translated into immediate financial returns. As a result, projects that could strengthen social cohesion struggle to compete. This project responds to that gap by introducing a methodology that recognizes social impact as a measurable component of public value and embeds it within legally compliant public decision-making processes. The initiative was developed through a partnership between the City of Torino, the Cottino Social Impact Campus and a network of academic and institutional partners. At its core is the development of a model allowing public authorities to assess the social, environmental and economic outcomes generated by alternative uses of public assets. The legal team designed a framework that allows impact evaluation to be embedded within administrative procedures such as concessions, leases and regeneration contracts. This required addressing complex constraints related to public finance law, procurement rules and administrative accountability, ensuring that social impact considerations remain fully compatible with principles of transparency and regulatory compliance. The result is a legally robust mechanism that allows municipalities to integrate impact criteria into contractual structures and selection processes. The project introduces a governance model based on multi-stakeholder collaboration. Public institutions, civil society organizations and private actors contribute to identifying needs and defining impact objectives, aligning urban regeneration strategies with community priorities. By creating the legal conditions that allow social value to be recognized in public asset management, the initiative provides a replicable model that can help cities integrate impact-oriented governance into urban regeneration processes.

Onboarding Nature Toolkit & Movement

Nominated Legal Team:

• Mhairi Letcher, B Lab Europe
• Jacobien Viets, Alliance Busines Counsels
• Emiliano Giovine, GAIL

 

Onboarding Nature Initiative Team:

• Tessa van Soest, B Lab Benelux
• Daan van Apeldoorn, B Lab Benelux
• Tineke Lambooy, Nyenrode Business University
• Alexandra Pimor, Earth Law Centre

The Project:

We galvanise business as a force for good through a practical nature governance toolkit to help organisations evolve from human-centred decision-making to nature-inclusive governance. The toolkit is four governance models—Nature as Inspiration, Advisor, Director, Shareholder—highlighting companies that have embedded nature governance within their corporate structures to give nature a voice in strategy, decisions and accountability. The initiative was developed through initial collaboration of B Lab Benelux, Earth Law Center, and Nyenrode Business University, grounded in values of care, community and collaboration: together with further partners championing the nature governance movement in corporate life and developing regional Onboarding Nature toolkits across jurisdictions. Toolkits are in development or use in the Netherlands, Italy, UK, Belgium, France and Nordics, with global rollout planned incl. North and South America, Australasia, Africa. The toolkit consists of 4 chapters: Chapter 1 explores recognising nature as a stakeholder in corporate governance. Chapter 2 examines ways to onboard nature through the 4 governance models, with 10 case-study companies alongside supporting legal and theoretical research on how nature can be represented within corporate decision-making. Chapter 3 invites organisations to join the movement, outlining practical steps as a roadmap to implement onboarding nature within governance frameworks. Chapter 4 offers jurisdiction-specific legal templates to support implementation across different legal systems. The models represent different levels of integration. Nature as Inspiration can be expressed through policy commitments or by embedding nature within an organisation’s constitution. Nature as Advisor introduces consultative governance mechanisms such as advisory boards representing nature’s interests. Nature as Director embeds nature’s voice and vote within governance, including one-tier or two-tier boards. Nature as Shareholder integrates nature within ownership structures through mechanisms such as golden shares, neutralised capital or differentiated voting rights. Scalable across jurisdictions and organisational sizes, the toolkit provides lawyers, companies and policymakers with practical tools to embed nature within governance systems and build more resilient, nature-inclusive economic models

2026 Judging Panel

The judging panel is composed of NYU Law representatives and industry experts who select the Grunin Prize winner based on the submission materials, references, and a final interview.

Meet the 2026 judging panel below:

Deborah Burand

Deborah Burand

Professor of Law Emerita, NYU School of Law; Faculty Director, Grunin Center for Law and Social Entrepreneurship

 

Deborah Burand is a professor of law emerita at NYU Law. Before retiring from NYU Law, she founded and directed the International Transactions Clinic from August 2015 through August 2025. She continues to serve as the faculty director of the Grunin Center for Law and Social Entrepreneurship and currently teaches in NYU Law’s Paris program.  

During 2010-11, Burand served as general counsel to the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (now called the DFC), 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 received her BA from DePauw University cum laude, and a joint degree, JD/MSFS with honors, from Georgetown University.

Jay Grunin

Jay Grunin

Co-Founder and Chairman, Jay and Linda Grunin Foundation

 

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 NYU 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

Professor of Law Emerita, Founder and Former Faculty Co-Director of the Grunin Center and the Jacobson Leadership Program in Law and Business

 

Helen Scott is a professor of law emerita at NYU 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 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 SBA 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 NYU Law faculty, Scott practiced law in Washington, DC, and New York.

Rachel Robbins

Rachel Robbins

Independent Strategic Adviser

 

Rachel F. Robbins is currently an independent strategic adviser with 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.

Amélie Baudot

Amélie Baudot

Deputy CEO, The International Fund for Public Interest Media

 

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. Baudot 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 Baudot’s career has been spent in-house working for startups in the international development and impact investment space, building their legal and governance functions from scratch. Baudot began her career as a finance lawyer at Allen & Overy LLP. In that role, Baudot worked on bankruptcy cases, work-outs, court-sanctioned refinancings, and corporate reorganizations, including acting as the lead associate on the GBP 1.6 billion restructuring of a UK financial services company.

Baudot earned a JD 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.

Emmeline Liu

Emmeline Liu

General Counsel, Calvert Impact Capital

 

Emmeline Liu is the General Counsel of the Calvert Impact Group. Emmeline oversees all of Calvert Impact Group’s legal affairs including its overall legal structure and approach to impact. She helps to structure creative and innovative legal structures for new impact products Calvert brings to market. She oversees regulatory compliance and securities issues relating to all of Calvert Impact’s products including the Community Investment Note, the Cut Carbon Notes, the small business credit funds and Mission Driven Bank Fund. She was a recipient of the 2024 Grunin Prize for her work on Cut Carbon Notes.