Adam Braun

Founder & CEO, Pencils of Promise 

Adam Braun is the Founder and CEO of Pencils of Promise, an award-winning nonprofit organization that has built more than 100 schools across Africa, Asia and Latin America and delivered over 4 million educational hours in its first four years. PoP was founded with just $25 using Braun's unique "For-Purpose" approach to blending nonprofit idealism with for-profit business principles. In 2012, he was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 List.

Braun began his career in finance, until he met a young boy begging on the streets and asked him what he wanted most in the world. The answer-"A pencil." Braun then traveled through 50+ countries to focus on educational systems and eventually left a dream job at Bain & Company to launch Pencils of Promise.

He now speaks often on citizen and corporate philanthropy, 21^st century education, entrepreneurship, social media and the intersection of the nonprofit and for-profit spaces. He graduated magna cum laude from Brown University, previously worked at leading consulting firm Bain & Company, was selected as one of the first ten World Economic Forum Global Shapers and has been a featured speaker at the United Nations, Clinton Global Initiative, Google Zeitgeist, Microsoft and the YPO Global Leadership Summit.