Background
Braun was born in New York City to a religious Conservative Jewish family and raised in Greenwich, Connecticut with his siblings Scott (better known as music promoter Scooter Braun), Liza, Sam, and Cornelio.
Braun was born in New York City to a religious Conservative Jewish family and raised in Greenwich, Connecticut with his siblings Scott (better known as music promoter Scooter Braun), Liza, Sam, and Cornelio.
Adam attended Brown University, where he played varsity basketball for the Brown Bears and graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor"s degree in economics, sociology, and public & private sector organizations.
He is the also creator of the “for-purpose” approach and wrote the New York Times bestselling book,: How an Ordinary Person Can Create Extraordinary Change. Braun went abroad through the Semester at Sea program to see the world while studying and traveled to over fifty countries after graduation. While visiting different countries, Adam asked local kids what they wanted most in the world.
In India, a young boy begging on the streets told Adam that he wanted a pencil.
Adam gave the boy his own pencil, but this story served as the inspiration for Braun and finally led him to start his own organization, Pencils of Promise. Prior to grounding Pencils of Promise, Braun worked at Bain & Company in 2007-2010.
Braun founded Pencils of Promise as he turned 25 years old in October 2008 with a $25 bank deposit, focusing on crowdsourcing through grassroots events and social media to raise funds. Within four years Pencils of Promise founded over a hundred schools.
As of 2016, they have broken ground on more than 330 schools and served more than 35,000 children throughout the developing world.
Braun"s public speaking and writing frequently advocates for the adoption of a “for-purpose” approach, which he established as a framework to help organizations and companies succeed. His term "profitable purpose” has also seen widespread cultural adoption. Both terms were unveiled during a keynote at the Google Zeitgeist Conference, and have since gained traction with companies and publications including Huffington Post, Fast Company and Mashable.
: How an Ordinary Person Can Create Extraordinary Change debuted at #2 on the New York Times Bestseller list after being released on March 18, 2014 by Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.
The narrative-driven memoir is broken into thirty short chapters, each titled with a mantra, which collectively provide the guiding steps to a life of success and significance. After selling out on Amazon within five days of release, the book became an Amazon #1 Bestseller and was listed on LinkedIn as one of the “5 Books Every 20-Something Needs to Read”.
In July 2014 it was recognized as the #1 bestselling book in the country under “What Corporate America is Reading.".