Raafet Azzouz (E06): ‘I Want to Change the Immigration Narrative’

Raafet Azzouz (E06) has launched the New Colossus Project in partnership with MIT: an initiative combining a podcast, mentor community, scholarships and investors to help promote immigration success stories. Interview. 

ESSEC Alumni: What have been the main milestones in your career? 

Raafet Azzouz: I was born into a family of doctors in Bizerte, a small town on the Mediterranean coast of Tunisia. After completing a scientific baccalaureate with specialisation in mathematics at the French Lycée in Tunis, I was awarded an excellence scholarship by France to enter a Janson-de-Sailly preparatory course in Paris. Two years later I enrolled at ESSEC. I had work placements in strategy with Chanel and Total, and obtained a dual degree in law from Cergy-Pontoise University. My interest in geopolitics and raw materials finally led me to trading rooms, initially at JP Morgan, then Merrill Lynch, where I spent 15 years, working between London and New York. I was there during the 2008 financial crisis, when the bank was taken over by Bank of America. I then developed Quantitative Investment Strategies (QIS), a quantitative, multi-strategy hedge fund dealing in raw materials and equity derivatives. We started off with assets of $250 million and a team of ten people; when I left, we were managing tens of billions for pension and sovereign funds, with more than a hundred employees. I nevertheless wanted to turn a new page, and move towards impact, transmission and values. I took a career break to enter the MIT’s Sloan Fellows MBA, in Cambridge, where I co-founded Athena Impact, a responsible investment fintech incubated at MIT Sandbox and Harvard Innovation Lab, and launched the MIT New Colossus Project.

EA: What inspired you to launch this project? 

R. Azzouz: The MIT New Colossus Project draws directly on my own background. Since leaving Africa, I have always felt like an outsider, whether in Paris, London, New York or Cambridge. And despite qualifications from renowned schools and a career in Wall Street, I have never overcome the need to justify my position and prove my worth. At MIT and Harvard, I realised this ‘inner fire’ kindled by my uprooting had taught me tenacity, resilience and audacity, and that I wasn’t the only person in this situation. Yet these qualities are missing from the collective narrative of immigration. Hence the idea of the New Colossus Project. The idea is to celebrate and highlight the contribution of business innovators from elsewhere, through action combining a podcast, a mentor community, scholarships and investors. Our message is that immigration represents a strategic competitive lever; its often-invisible paths are extraordinary, and America and Europe have a duty to showcase them rather than minimise them.

EA: What types of profiles have you given a voice to so far? 

R. Azzouz: Over the course of a year, I’ve had the opportunity to speak with, among others, Daron Acemoglu and Moungi Bawendi, respectively Nobel Economics 2024 and Nobel Chemistry 2023 prize winners; Al Goldstein and Wemimo Abbey, both founders of French unicorns; Noubar Afeyan, CEO of Moderna, and Fiona Murray, MIT professor and president of the NATO innovation fund. These outstanding figures, from Tunis, Beirut, Lagos, Kiev, London, Togo and Uzbekistan, all left their homeland to create, start businesses and rebuild their lives elsewhere.

EA: What have you learnt from this? 

R. Azzouz: I have learnt 5 lessons: Lesson n°1: Immigration is a transformation driver. Whether chosen or forced, it changes identity lastingly and triggers ambition. Noubar Afeyan, who filed more than 100 patents before even obtaining his Green Card, thus links innovation, a radical act of imagination, to the sense of not belonging which characterises immigrants. Lesson n°2: Immigration encourages people to create and thus avoid suffering. Entrepreneurship represents a way to recover the empowerment that immigrants are often deprived of. Claude Grunitzky, who left Togo for London and then New York, where he founded the transcultural magazine Trace, admits he never applied for a job: ‘I wanted to be free, and never let anyone else decide my future.’ Al Goldstein, a serial entrepreneur originally from Uzbekistan who raised more than $1 billion, believes his obsession for efficiency and transparency stems from his experience as a political refugee. Wemimo Abbey, who fled the poor districts of Lagos and created the fintech Esusu to fight financial exclusion, claims that ‘determination is often born of the refusal to let poverty shape your destiny.’ Lesson n°3: The first circles play a key role in immigration. Few of these paths would have been possible without a welcoming community or decisive mentorship. All these people emphasise the role of diasporas or fellow alumni, particularly in the initial years. Lesson n°4: The ‘outsider’ identity can become a strength. All my guest speakers suffered for a long time from the feeling of being marginalised, before turning it into a comparative advantage. Growing up between several cultures forced them to develop a specific form of acuity, an oblique way of thinking that enables you to redefine possibilities. Noubar Afeyan thus compares innovation to a sort of intellectual migration. Lesson n°5: American meritocracy works...sometimes. All my guests agree that the USA is still a land of opportunities. But this opportunity is not a gift, it must be earned. The path to acquiring capital, visas and networks is full of pitfalls. Daron Acemoglu sums it up like this: ‘There are open institutions, but you have to know how to read and activate them.’

EA: Beyond these experiences, what data is there on the contribution of immigration to the USA?

R. Azzouz: The figures speak for themselves; first-generation immigrants form one of the little-known motors of the modern US economy. According to the National Foundation for American Policy, 55% of American unicorns (start-ups valued at more than $1 billion) have at least one immigrant founder. The New American Economy reveals that 42% of Fortune 500 firms were created by an immigrant or their child. And according to Harvard Business School and Stanford Research, 40% of US Nobel Prize winners are researchers born elsewhere, while 30% of technology patents filed in the USA come from inventors born outside the country. In other words, innovation flourishes where borders remain open.

EA: Is this a specifically American dynamic?

R. Azzouz: Europe is on an equal footing. The UK, Germany, France, and Scandinavian countries produce the same results, and attracting foreign talent is becoming a strategic battle between blocks. What makes the USA unique, however, is its ability, while imperfect, to forge a national narrative based on inclusiveness and meritocracy, and to encourage people willing to take risks. 

EA: Do the recent US decisions on immigration change the game? 

R. Azzouz: There is a dissonance between this message and recent political moves. In fact, these changes are not specific to the USA, they are also happening in Germany, France and the UK. They clearly place a model which works in danger by scaring off future investors. Only time will tell us the consequences...it’s a little too early to draw conclusions. 

EA: What are your prospects for the coming months?

R. Azzouz: I’m preparing to roll out the project in Europe, starting with France. My goal is to collect new testimonies and sign partnerships with sponsors and institutions such as ESSEC or Polytechnique. France must also showcase its business innovators from elsewhere and draw on their paths to nurture its economic narrative and strengthen national cohesion. Beyond this geographical expansion, another development step will consist in structuring a community of mentors to guide these talents, in both the USA and Europe, and incorporating the teachings of the project in business school and MIT programmes, at the intersection of entrepreneurship, management and human history.

Interview by Louis Armengaud Wurmser (E10), Content Manager at ESSEC Alumni

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