The Promise of a Pencil: How an Ordinary Person Can Create Extraordinary Change

From one of Forbes’s “30 Under 30” and Wired Magazine’s “50 People Who Are Changing the World,” the inspiring memoir of a young man who traded a lucrative career in finance to found Pencils of Promise—the groundbreaking organization that has built more than 125 schools across the developing world.

Raised in Greenwich, Connecticut, where privilege was the norm, Adam Braun always dreamed of a career on Wall Street. While studying economics and entrepreneurship at Brown University, his future path seemed inevitable, until he started traveling to some of the most impoverished regions of the world asking a child in each country what they wanted most. In India, a young boy begging on the street answered, “a pencil.” The powerful simplicity of this response altered Braun’s life—and his purpose—forever.

Upon graduation he accepted a job at a prestigious consulting firm, but his passion for global education was too strong to ignore. In 2008, starting with just $25 of his own money on his twenty-fifth birthday, Braun left his job to demonstrate that one school could be built through the power of many small acts. His “for-purpose” approach turned the nonprofit paradigm on its head and blazed a new path for how modern movements are created. Today, Pencils of Promise has become a leader in social media for social good, and the official charity of many business moguls and celebrities, including Justin Bieber.

The Promise of a Pencil chronicles Braun’s journey to find his calling and the lessons learned along the way.