Adam Braun

Adam Braun is a New York Times bestselling author and the Founder of Pencils of Promise, an award-winning organization that has broken ground on more than 200 schools around the world. In recent years he has been named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 List, Wired Magazine’s “50 People Who Are Changing the World,” and was selected as one of the World Economic Forum’s first ten Global Shapers. He has also been a featured speaker at The White House, United Nations and Clinton Global Initiative. Braun began working summers at hedge funds when he was just sixteen years old, sprinting down the path to a successful Wall Street career. He started his college career as a Division 1 basketball player, but while traveling abroad he met a young boy begging on the streets of India. When Braun asked him what he wanted most in the world, he simply answered, “a pencil.” This small request became the inspiration for Pencils of Promise, the organization Braun would leave Bain & Company several years later to start with just $25 on his twenty-fifth birthday. Using his unique “for-purpose” approach, he meshed for-profit business acumen with non-profit idealism and in doing so created a leading organization in the global education space, proving that anyone can start a movement that matters.