A generous endowment from Jay Grunin ’67 and Linda Kalmanowitz Grunin ’67 made possible the launch of NYU Law’s Grunin Center for Law and Social Entrepreneurship in 2017.
After meeting at NYU Law, Jay and Linda Grunin practiced law together in Toms River, New Jersey, for some 30 years. In 2013 they established the Jay and Linda Grunin Foundation to formalize their existing philanthropic activities.
The Grunin Center is a trailblazer in social justice and education innovation at the intersection of law and social entrepreneurship—commercial endeavors that support the well-being of people and the environment. The center is the home for the International Transactions Clinic and the Business Law Transactions Clinic.
First presented in June 2018, the Grunin Prize is an annual award that aims to reward the innovation, replicability and/or scalability, and potential impact of projects and solutions developed by lawyers to advance the fields of social entrepreneurship and impact investing.
Linda Grunin passed away in April 2018 but left an influential and inspiring legacy. “It is the audacious hope of Linda and myself that social entrepreneurship can become a major sector of the law, with elements combining both public and private law, which would increase the scalability of sustainable solutions to some of the world’s largest and seemingly intractable challenges,” Jay Grunin said at the time the center was launched.
To honor Linda’s legacy and commemorate the Grunins’ deep connection with the Law School, a classroom was dedicated to Jay and Linda in February 2017.
Posted March 19, 2019