Auburn University’s Critical Conversations Series to continue with March 3 speaker

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Auburn University is continuing its Critical Conversations Speaker Series with a March 3 event featuring Porter Braswell, the CEO and co-founder of the technology platform Jopwell.

Under Braswell’s leadership, Jopwell has formed partnerships with more than 100 of America’s leading companies and has facilitated tens of thousands of connections between the Jopwell community members and its clients. Jopwell seeks to help black, Latinx and Native American students and professionals unlock opportunities for career advancement.

Braswell’s talk will take place at 5 p.m. March 3 in the Mell Classroom Building, room 2550, furthering Auburn’s commitment to encouraging conversations around intellectual diversity, inclusion and free speech in higher education.

“We are thrilled to continue this series, which explores how our shared values of free speech and civil discourse are being both critically discussed and thoughtfully applied at Auburn University,” said Taffye Benson Clayton, associate provost and vice president for Inclusion and Diversity.

In 2017 alone, Jopwell was recognized among Entrepreneur Magazine's “100 Most Brilliant Ideas,” Fast Company's “World's Most Innovative Companies,” and as Business Insider's “One of The Hottest NYC Companies to Watch.” Braswell's professional awards and recognitions include LinkedIn's 2015 “Next Wave, Top Professionals Under 35,” Inc. Magazine's 2016 “30 Under 30,” Fast Company's 2017 “100 Most Creative People In Business,” Crain's 2018 “40 Under 40,” Vanity Fair's 2018 "Future Innovators Index" and most recently Adweek's 2018 "Young Influentials."

As an African American chief executive officer, Braswell regularly speaks about the importance of diversity in the workforce and has been featured in numerous publications and articles discussing the topic. Additionally, Braswell is a LinkedIn influencer where he frequently shares his thoughts and opinions on the state of diversity in the workforce with his more than 110,000 followers. In early 2019, Braswell released his book titled "Let Them See You - The Guide for Leveraging Your Diversity at Work," published by Penguin Random House, which addresses both the complexity of and necessity for diversity in corporate America.

Braswell started his career at Goldman Sachs on the Foreign Exchange sales desk. Prior to Goldman Sachs, Braswell graduated from Yale University in 2011, where he was a four-year member of the men's varsity basketball team.

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