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Adam Braun Biography
Adam Braun is an American entrepreneur, author, and philanthropist. He is the CEO and co-founder of MissionU, a debt-free higher education program, and founder of Pencils of Promise, a non-profit organization that builds schools and increases access to education for children in the developing world.
He is also the creator of the “for-purpose” approach and wrote The New York Times bestselling book, The Promise of a Pencil: How an Ordinary Person Can Create Extraordinary Change.
Adam Braun Age
Adam was born on October 31, 1983 in New York City. He is 35 years old as of 2018.
Adam Braun Family
Adam 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 Braun Education
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.
Adam Braun Wife | Adam Braun Twins
Adam married his wife Tehillah in 2014. The couple has two twin sons Bayla and Dylan. When Braun met his wife, Tehillah, she had $110,000 in student debt and no bachelor’s degree. Raised by a loving family with modest financial means, Tehillah believed that a college education was her ticket to greater financial security But two-and-a-half years into her studies, she had taken on so much debt that she had to leave college early and start working to pay it back.
Adam Braun Pencils Of Promise
Adam started working summers at hedge funds when he was sixteen years old, sprinting down the path to a successful Wall Street career.
He went abroad through the Semester at Sea program to see the world while studying and traveled to over fifty countries after graduation. According to him, while visiting different countries, he asked local children what they wanted most in the world, and in India, a young boy begging on the streets told him that he wanted a pencil. Adam states he gave the boy his own pencil and that this incident served as the inspiration for him and finally led him to start his own organization, Pencils of Promise.
Adam founded Pencils of Promise as he turned 25 years old in October 2008 with only $25 of his own money, focusing instead on raising funds from other people through grassroots events and social media. Within four years Pencils of Promise founded over a hundred schools. They had founded more than 500 schools and served more than 70,000 children throughout the developing world as of 2018 .
His 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. He also coined the term “profitable purpose”.Both terms were unveiled during a keynote at the Google Zeitgeist Conference.
Adam Braun The Promise Of A Pencil
The Promise of a Pencil: 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 purport to 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”
Adam Braun MissionU
Adam is the the Co-founder & CEO of MissionU. His inspiration came after seeing the crushing impact of massive student debt in his wife’s life, as well as hearing on dozens of college campuses about these same issues where students felt like their curriculum wasn’t teaching them what’s needed to succeed in the real world. Once he learned that student debt is the only debt in the country that can’t be discharged through bankruptcy, his co-founder, Mike Adams, and him were determined to create a debt-free alternative that prepares students to succeed at today’s most in-demand jobs and companies.
MissionU aligns with students from day one on the goal by charging $0 upfront tuition and instead agreeing to a small percentage of income for just 36 months and only if you’ve landed a job making $50,000 or more. It is filling the huge demand for people who want to build a great career without taking on all the risk of paying huge sums of money upfront to an education institution without a guarantee of success.
Thus far we’ve raised $11.5M, launched a new major in Data Analytics + Business Intelligence, and brought together a world-class set of instructors and advisors from Harvard, Stanford and MIT.
Adam Braun Net Worth
Using his unique “for-purpose” approach, the organization has now raised more than $50M to address global education. Through his work at MissionU and WeGrow, he has combined his passion for mission-driven impact to support children and adults in the pursuit of unlocking their greatest potential. He has not yet disclosed his estimated net worth.