John J Studzinski

Early life and education

John Studzinski was born in 1956 in Peabody, Massachusetts, a town 15 miles northeast of Boston. His parents were working-class Polish immigrants, and his father was a financial manager at General Electric's aircraft-engine division. Education and industriousness were emphasized in the family, and music as well. His was a traditional Polish Catholic family and community, and Catholicism and Christianity were a bedrock in his life. He worked in soup kitchens as a teenager, and helped start a toll-free number to inform adolescents about sexually transmitted diseases.

Studzinski attended prep school at St. John's Preparatory School in Massachusetts. He graduated magna cum laude from Bowdoin College in 1978, with a double BA degree in biology and sociology. He received an MBA in finance and marketing from the University of Chicago in 1980.

Morgan Stanley

After receiving his MBA, Studzinski began his investment banking career in New York in 1980 on Wall Street, at Morgan Stanley. He spent 23 years at the company, in positions of increasing responsibility. In 1984 he moved to London, to create and build Morgan Stanley’s European mergers and acquisitions (M&A) advisory business. He served as head of the European investment banking division and deputy chairman of Morgan Stanley International. By the time he left Morgan Stanley in 2003, the division he built was the number three European M&A advisory.

HSBC

In June 2003, Sir John Bond at London-based multinational bank giant HSBC hired Studzinski to create and build an investment banking division, along with Stuart Gulliver. As co-head of investment banking at HSBC Group, and a member of the Group Management Board, Studzinski was in charge of mergers and acquisitions, while Gulliver built the markets side of the investment banking franchise. Studzinski made a number of hirings, and grew the new M&A division. After three years at HSBC, following Bond's retirement, Studzinski left the giant bank for Blackstone in May 2006.

Blackstone

In 2006 Studzinski joined The Blackstone Group, an American multinational private equity, investment banking, alternative asset management, and financial services corporation based in New York City. He joined as the senior managing director in its investment and advisory group and as a member of the firm's executive committee. He was recruited to oversee and develop Blackstone’s mergers-and-acquisitions advisory business, Blackstone Advisory Partners, in the United States and Europe, and to open an office in London. CEO Stephen A. Schwarzman said in 2006 that Studzinski's "outstanding track record in transatlantic investment banking will be invaluable in accelerating the growth of our advisory business".

Studzinski is based in both New York and London. His primary role as global head of Blackstone Advisory Partners was to oversee Blackstone's corporate M&A advisory services business in the U.S., and further develop the corporate M&A advisory business in Europe and Asia. He was personally involved in many of the firm's largest advisory assignments. He advised multinational corporations, conglomerates, governments, banks, and institutions, on acquisitions, equity investments, restructurings, spin-offs, mergers, and overseas operations.

In early 2015, Blackstone began spinning off three of its divisions, including its M&A advisory group, to avoid any potential conflicts of interest with its primary private-equity business. After assisting with the transition, Studzinski became Vice Chairman of Investor Relations and Business Development at Blackstone. In this capacity, he holds responsibility for a number of sovereign and international institutional relationships, as well as ultra high-net-worth families outside the U.S.

Philanthropy and advisorships

Studzinski is an active, prolific, hands-on philanthropist. His numerous philanthropic interests and activities fall mainly into three categories: the arts, the homeless, and human rights. The motivation behind his philanthropic work is "human dignity, and the nurturing of it". He feels strongly about giving opportunities to those who have none and can't afford to find any.

Arts

In addition to the more than £6 million ($9 million) he has given to the Tate Modern museum as of 2012, Studzinski is also passionate about giving opportunities to people in the early stages of careers in the arts, and steadily supporting the growth of their success. He feels that "money is so much better spent on the process of creating, on nurturing emerging talent and staying with it, a commitment over the years. And networks: bringing young creative people into a network they can learn from and that will support them."

In 2001 he established the Genesis Foundation, which helps and supports young people in the fields of music, theatre, and the visual arts, by providing them with practical and financial support in the earliest stages of their careers. It is his personal foundation, which he fully funds. As of 2015, the Genesis Foundation has supported more than 900 artists. It has donated over £10 million to enable young artists to develop their talents, including by financially supporting their development, providing opportunities, giving them access to talented mentors and valuable networks, and commissioning new work.

Some of the Genesis Foundation's numerous projects include awarding scholarships to support students in the three-year acting course at LAMDA. It has supported up-and-coming theatre directors at the Young Vic since 2003, via the Genesis Directors Program (2003–2009), the two-year Genesis Fellowship, the Genesis Directors Network, and the Genesis Future Directors Award for young directors. It funds the Royal Court Theatre's International Playwrights Programme, which nurtures and mentors young playwrights around the world. In New York City, the foundation funds the Residency Five programme at the Signature Theatre, supporting nine playwrights over a five-year residency and guaranteeing each playwright three world-premiere productions of their new plays.

The Genesis Foundation's music ventures have included funding posts for new opera directors and répétiteurs at the Welsh National Opera. It funds the Genesis Sixteen, a free program which nurtures the next generation of ensemble singers, bridging the gap from vocal student to professional, implemented by The Sixteen, a world-renowned ensemble of classical singers. The foundation also commissions various new works, including operas and choral compositions.

In 2012 the foundation launched the Genesis Prize, a biennial £25,000 prize awarded to a mentor of young artistic talent whose work has effected real change in the practice and careers of arts professionals or graduates. From 2002–2007, the foundation also provided start-up loans and support for young people wishing to set up creative enterprises, via a five-year partnership with the Prince's Trust.

In 2016, via the foundation Studzinski partnered with the Hampton Court Palace's Choral Foundation to organize the first Catholic service in the palace's Chapel Royal in over 450 years. The service, conducted mainly in Latin, was in celebration of the King Henry VIII palace's 500th anniversary, and featured choral music from the 15th and 16th centuries. Studzinski stated that "Dialogue between faiths is much needed and welcomed in these turbulent times. We need to recognise that we have more in common than not."

The homeless

The Financial Times has called Studzinski a "champion of homeless charity work in London". He is a founder member of the Passage Day Centre, one of the largest day care centers for the homeless in London, and he funds the homeless charity Emmaus UK. He also works as a regular volunteer at the Passage soup kitchen.

In 1998 Studzinski co-launched, and was the first chairman of, Business Action on Homelessness, which is a partnership between Business in the Community, major companies, homeless agencies, and the British government. The organization raises companies' awareness of homelessness throughout the UK, and works with businesses to equip homeless people with the skills needed to gain and sustain employment. It encourages companies to provide work placements and training courses assisting the homeless back into work. Studzinski promotes and encourages corporate social responsibility, and organized regular visits for businesspeople to see homeless projects in action. The organization changes the perceptions companies have of homelessness and helps homeless people back into employment.

Studzinski has also long decried the rising rates of youth unemployment, especially in the wake of the recession, and has called upon businesses and governments to focus on youth employment. He points to the model of Germany and its continued post-war economic success and weathering of the global economic crisis, noting that its emphasis on medium-sized companies – and concomitant values of the right to work, job creation, client satisfaction, and product excellence – have kept unemployment, including youth unemployment, low.

Human rights

Studzinski is Vice Chair of Human Rights Watch (HRW), and he developed the European arm of the organization. He has also been director of HRW, a member of its executive committee, and chairman of its investment committee. He has stated that his involvement in Human Rights Watch is an extension of his strong belief in "respect for humanity, justice and dignity. Human dignity, the respect for human life and dignity". As a board member of HRW, Studzinski has used his international contacts to help the organization expand so that it can draw attention to atrocities across the world, including in Syria and the Middle East.

He is co-founder and chair of the Arise Foundation, which partners with worldwide local networks to stop human trafficking and slavery. Studzinski is also chair of Talitha Kum, an organization of religious nuns which is linked with Arise Foundation and which combats sex trafficking and rescues victims. Talitha Kum is a group of more than 1,000 nuns in over 70 countries; they prevent and stop sex trafficking, and rescue and shelter sex-trafficking victims. Some of the nuns pose as prostitutes in order to infiltrate trafficking rings and rescue girls and young women.

Additional advisorships

Studzinski is a trustee of both the Tate Foundation and also the American Patrons of Tate. He is a member of the council of the Royal College of Art, and he is chairman of Create London, a non-profit organization that takes the arts into East London and other areas, connecting artists with communities through an ambitious program of projects. He has been elected to the board of trustees of the J. Paul Getty Trust, and is also on the board of directors of the Foundation for Art and Preservation in Embassies, which promotes American art abroad.

He is on the board of trustees of Bowdoin College, and is a board member of the International Youth Foundation, which mobilizes businesses, governments, and other organizations to create opportunities for youth to learn, work, and lead. He is president of the American Friends of the Royal Foundation of The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry, which focuses on challenges facing young people, members of the armed forces, and conservation.

Studzinski is also on the board of trustees of the Royal Parks Foundation, and is chairman of Benjamin Franklin House. He is on the Policy Advisory Council of the Institute for Public Policy Research. In international affairs, he is Vice Chair of the Atlantic Council, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Honors

Personal life

Studzinski has residences in London and New York, and divides his time between the two cities. Strongly motivated by his spiritual and religious faith, he has a chapel in his historic London home, and prays and reads books on religion and meditation daily. Holding an extensive art collection, he has been an active buyer and seller of art.