The Promise of a Pencil

Adam Braun’s The Promise of a Pencil: How an Ordinary Person Can Create Extraordinary Change is both a memoir and a guide for pursuing one’s passion. Braun began his career on a typical path towards success: education at an Ivy League university and a lucrative position at a consulting firm. But he left his job at age 25 to found the organization Pencils of Promise, a nonprofit that helps to build schools and provide educational materials to underserved communities in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. His 2014 memoir details the path Braun took towards a more purposeful life and offers his advice on how others can do the same.

Braun divides the book into 30 short chapters. Each chapter is headed with a motivating mantra, such as “Get out of your comfort zone” and “Read the signs along the path.” Braun begins the narrative with his childhood in the wealthy community of Greenwich, Connecticut. His parents instill in their children the importance of giving back and donating to from a young age. They also stress that “Brauns are different.” Brauns don’t get money in exchange for good grades, Brauns donate extravagant amounts of money to charity at Christmas, and Brauns spend more time playing outside than on the couch with a video game.

At first, Braun’s life is on a typical path for a young man from a well-to-do family. He attends Brown University and majors in economics. Things begin to change when he studies abroad through the Semester at Sea program. Braun resolves that in every country he visits, he will find a native child and ask them one question: “If you could have anything in the world, what would you want most?” The answers surprise him. These children never ask for toys or entertainment. Instead, he collects answers like “to dance,” “a book,” and “for my mom to be healthy.” Then, in India, a child says all he wants is a pencil. Braun gives the boy his own.



That request for something so simple sticks with Braun. The next summer, Braun travels abroad again, backpacking across Europe and southeast Asia. While in Cambodia, he meets the Cambodian Children’s Fund Founder, Scott Neeson, and volunteers as a fundraising coordinator for the organization. He finds pride and purpose in the work. From that point on, Braun wants to join the nonprofit world and dedicate himself to doing good. But everyone else in his life warns him that he should spend most of his career making money in the business world, and dedicate his life to charity only after building financial security and business experience.

After graduating, Braun takes another backpacking trip, this time to South America. He meets a man named Joel Puac, who asks Braun to help him learn English so he can teach it to his children. In helping, Braun realizes that what he wants out of life is to help others help themselves through education. He decides that education is the way to break the cycle of poverty and pave the way towards a better life.

When Braun returns to the United States, he joins management consulting firm Bain & Company, embarking on a hectic life of 12-hour workdays. He struggles to find meaning in his life. Finally, he realizes that rather than wait half his life to join the nonprofit sector, the best time to take a career risk is when he’s young, before he’s tied down with a family and a mortgage. With that in mind, he outlines a plan for his own nonprofit: Pencils with Promise, a global organization that will build schools and help poor communities provide children with a good education.



He gets his start with a $25 deposit on his 25th birthday. Braun hosts fundraising events and plumbs his network of consultants, investment bankers, and other professionals for assistance. With time and a lot of unsolicited emails, Braun’s organization is up and running. He notes that the reason most new ventures fail is because “people stop trying after being told no too many times.” Braun persists. To build the first school, in a small village in Laos, he makes local contacts and enlists help from the villagers. He lays cement and hauls bricks himself, helping not just with funds and planning but with the physical construction of the building.

The project is a success, and as time goes on, Braun builds a volunteer network, spreads his message on social media and in person, and gives a popular TedX talk about Pencils with Promise to build a team of enthusiastic ambassadors. Soon, Braun leaves his job at Bain altogether to focus on his nonprofit. Pencils with Promise grows and continues building more schools.

In telling his story, Braun shows the risks and initiative he took to follow his dream. By detailing what he did to leverage $25 and a dream into a successful nonprofit, he offers a roadmap to readers of how to achieve similar things.



The Promise of a Pencil debuted at #2 on the New York Times bestseller list. Within five days of publication, it had sold out on Amazon. Braun continues to spread the word of how to achieve purpose and to run Pencils for Promise. As of 2017, the organization has built 410 schools in developing countries, providing over 70,000 children with an education.