Adam Braun

Why organisations work with Adam Braun

• He is a working CEO, not a retired one. Clarasight’s carbon planning software is in active commercial deployment with clients representing over $1 trillion in market capitalisation, so his content reflects current operating reality.
• He has built three organisations across three categories: a nonprofit started with $25 that grew to hundreds of schools globally, a venture-backed education startup acquired by WeWork, and a B2B sustainability platform. The pattern recognition across founder modes is rare.
• His “Build For Where The World Is Headed” framework gives leaders a teachable structure for anticipating change and committing capital before consensus forms, rather than another model for reacting after the fact.
• His Pencils of Promise origin story translates cleanly into a corporate room. Audiences leave with a specific argument about how individual conviction scales into institutional outcomes, evidenced by a real organisation, not an analogy.
• He pairs commercial credibility with a published, bestselling book on purpose-driven leadership, which means leadership development and culture briefs can be served by the same speaker without a register switch.

Biography highlights

• CEO and Co-Founder of Clarasight, carbon planning and intelligence software, formerly Climate Club
• Founder and Chairman of Pencils of Promise, a nonprofit started with $25 that has built schools across Ghana, Guatemala, Laos and Nicaragua
• Co-Founder and CEO of MissionU, acquired by WeWork in 2018; subsequently served as a senior executive in the WeGrow business
• New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of The Promise of a Pencil, Simon & Schuster
• Selected by the World Economic Forum as one of the original ten Global Shapers; named to Business Insider 40 Under 40 and Wired’s “50 People Who Are Changing the World”
• Brown University graduate; began his career at Bain & Company

Biography

The hard part of strategy is not seeing change. It is committing capital and people before the change is obvious to competitors. Most operating cultures are built to do the opposite.

Adam Braun has spent his career sitting in that gap as a founder. Pencils of Promise began with $25 and grew into a nonprofit operating schools across Ghana, Guatemala, Laos and Nicaragua. MissionU, the income-share-agreement college alternative he co-founded, was acquired by WeWork in 2018, where he then served as a senior executive in the WeGrow business. Clarasight, his current company, sells carbon planning software into enterprise clients representing more than $1 trillion in market value.

That arc gives him an unusual operating vocabulary. He has launched a category from zero capital, raised venture funding and exited through acquisition, and is now running a B2B SaaS business in a buyer-relevant category. The framework he teaches, “Build For Where The World Is Headed,” is the synthesis of those three founder modes into a structure leaders can use to evaluate where to deploy effort before the market rewards it.

His book The Promise of a Pencil, a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller published by Simon & Schuster, gives the same argument a leadership-development register. He was an original World Economic Forum Global Shaper, has been named to Business Insider 40 Under 40 and Wired’s “50 People Who Are Changing the World,” and built his early career at Bain & Company after graduating from Brown.

Key speaking topics

• Entrepreneurship and founder leadership
• Building organisations for future operating conditions
• Innovation under uncertainty
• Corporate sustainability as commercial advantage
• Purpose-driven business strategy
• Social entrepreneurship and scaled impact

Ideal for

• Founders, CEOs and executive committees setting growth or transformation agendas
• Heads of strategy, innovation and sustainability shaping medium-term capital decisions
• Leadership development programmes for high-potential operators and emerging executives
• Conferences focused on entrepreneurship, scale-up leadership, or corporate climate strategy

Audience outcomes

• A working framework for committing to direction before market consensus forms
• A founder’s view of how scaled impact actually compounds, drawn from three different ventures
• A practical read on where corporate sustainability becomes commercial advantage rather than reporting overhead
• A renewed argument for individual agency inside large organisations, evidenced rather than asserted