By William Wieters
Philippe Gluntz (PhD’73) did not come to Nashville for the weather or the music. He recalled with a laugh, “I looked at the map and said, ‘Where is it [Vanderbilt Business]? Nashville, Tennessee?’ I didn’t care. I wanted to work with Igor Ansoff.”
Gluntz planned to study with the “Pope of Corporate Strategy” at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, but a year before his departure, he received a letter from Ignor Ansoff, who would be taking over the deanship of a new business school in Nashville. “So, I had to change my plans and move to the south!”
Philippe Gluntz
Five decades later, Gluntz, now 85, holds the distinction as Vanderbilt’s very first doctoral graduate in business administration. Since earning his degree, he has co-founded one of France’s first IT firms, led a 200,000-employee telecom giant, and shaped Europe’s angel investing ecosystem from the ground up.
From Civil Servant to Entrepreneur
Beginning at École Polytechnique—a French Ivy League institution founded by Napoleon in 1794 as a military school to train elite officers—Gluntz was trained in mathematics and physics. Two years later, he earned a placement in Corps des Pontes et Chaussées. There he completed a master’s degree in civil engineering alongside a master’s degree in political science and economics from Sciences Po.
Gluntz then spent seven years in France’s public sector before realizing his pursuits were not his passions. “I didn’t really like what I had to do,” he admitted. “I decided that was not where I wanted to spend my whole life.”
That decision sparked his move to the U.S. through a government-sponsored program tasked at training future business educators. While at Vanderbilt, given his extensive academic background, Gluntz was invited to bypass the MBA track and become Vanderbilt’s first doctoral candidate in business, ultimately earning his Doctorate in Management.
Just before leaving for Nashville, Gluntz had his first run-in with startups, helping set the foundation for one with four colleagues. “The project of creating a small company in informatics was something which was appealing to me already at the time,” he explained.
His dissertation, entitled “Toward a Contingency Paradigm for Organization Development: A Model for Intervention in Power-Centered, High Conflict Systems in a French Public Environment” was a culmination of action research conducted both in France and the U.S. Gluntz joked, “Totally not catchy, but important work!”
Building and Leading Big
After returning to France in 1973, he became CEO of GSI, the company he had co-founded. GSI specialized in managing corporate IT systems. “We had a certain philosophy…to take over computer science, computer centers, and the networks of large corporations—run it on their behalf and save costs.”
A bigger opportunity soon emerged. “Alcatel…was in discussion with ITT Telecom to merge,” he recalled. “I became COO of that merged company. It was $4.6 billion turnover and 200,000 people.”
Ten years later, Gluntz came to the rescue and returned to GSI, ultimately leading a merger with ADP and serving as President of ADP Employer Services Europe for another decade.
Becoming a Business Angel
Gluntz is pictured second from the left with his wife, alongside Belgian and Dutch co-students and an American master’s student
Upon retiring, Gluntz shifted to a more personal focus: supporting founders. “I was interested already to not only have my own company, but to help young guys who are starting a new business…with my experience.”
Having invested individually, Gluntz realized the ecosystem needed structure. “The best thing was to design and create and lead a network of business angels. That was already existing in the States.”
He co-founded Paris Business Angels, “the number one network in France,” to which he then became President of France Angels, and later helped build Business Angels Europe, a continental umbrella for early-stage investors. “We created a lot of networks—65 networks of business angels in France.”
France Angels was created not only to grow the business angel community in France and Europe, but also to represent those communities in conversation with the French and European governments.
So far, he’s invested in over 40 startups. “Obviously, out of that, a lot are down…but some very successful. The best return I have is a company which is half in Paris, half in New York…now 2,000 times the value we invested.”
Philippe Gluntz’s Lessons from Vanderbilt
Gluntz credits his time at Vanderbilt with opening his eyes to new ways of thinking. “We had a lot of courses in change in organizations,” he said. “I came to Vanderbilt mostly for corporate strategy…but at the same time, I learned about psychology and sociology of organizations.” That balance of hard and soft skills stuck with him. “That was a good experience…maybe I would have done something different if I would have been in a traditional business school,” he said. “But that mix really impacted me.”
Looking back, he remains proud of the road less traveled. “I’m very proud to be the number-one doctorate. At that time, no American was going the same path,” he said.
Still Teaching, Still Building
Even now, Gluntz teaches part-time and continues developing case studies on post-merger integration. His experience leading GSI, Alcatel, and ADP became the foundation for his instruction at European business schools like EDHEC, ESSEC, and IAE Aix. “That’s something which has always been in my mind—how to make sure I can get a kind of lesson out of my experience and deliver it to students.”
From creating companies to empowering founders, Philippe Gluntz’s journey comes full circle: education, entrepreneurship, and global impact.
“What I liked the most is to really create a company and develop it,” he said. “Pick a strategy. Find the partners. Find the money. And make it happen.”