Catharsis Conference, December 2024

Dr. Rita Charon and Prune Nourry in conversation with Claude Grunitzky (Saturday, December 14th, 2024).



Dr. Rita Charon is a general internist and literary scholar who originated the field of narrative medicine. She is Professor and Founding Chair of the Department of Medical Humanities and Ethics and Professor of Medicine at Columbia University. She completed the MD at Harvard in 1978 and the PhD in English at Columbia in 1999, concentrating on narratology and the works of Henry James. Her research focuses on the consequences of narrative medicine practice, narrative medicine pedagogy, and health care team effectiveness.

Sculptor Prune Nourry has consistently expanded the boundaries of art through collaboration—fostering conversations at the forefront of artistic discourse and social engagement. Believing in the transformative power of sculpture, and the idea that artworks nurture collective emotions with the capacity to trigger change in a ripple-like effect, she created the Catharsis Arts Foundation  with Claude Grunitzky.

Claude Grunitzky is the CEO and Managing Partner of the Equity Alliance, a fund dedicated to providing capital to emerging, underrepresented venture capitalists and early stage founders. Claude is also the founder of two media companies focused on Black culture, TRACE) and TRUE Africa. Claude is a Visiting Social Innovator at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Social Innovation and Change Initiative, an accelerator of positive social change that supports visionary social innovators and strengthens the ecosystems they need to thrive. A graduate of London University and MIT, where he earned an MBA as a Sloan Fellow, Claude is a trustee at MoMA PS1 and at MASS MoCA, two of America’s leading contemporary art museums, and the Chairman of Catharsis Arts Foundation.


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