Ruben Porras-Sanchez

Senior Vice President & Agent, The Harry Walker Agency

Ruben is currently part of the world’s leading professional speakers bureau–The Harry Walker Agency. There, he works to share speakers’ unique and incredibly moving stories with audiences everywhere.

More than 15 years ago, he stumbled into the professional speaking industry as a speaker manager. How does one stumble into this industry? In his case, it was by proxy. His closest and dearest friend’s story was made famous and folks reached out to her to speak. He remembers one day, early on, he turned to her and said, “Who are these people and why are people paying you to speak?” Ruben quickly learned who and why, and they worked to leverage her platform to inspire more people through speaking, writing, and other works. Over the years, Ruben traveled around the world to events of all kind with one goal in mind–to do whatever was wanted and needed to ensure a successful event. After managing a speaker, he jumped on the events services side of the industry collaborating with sponsors and host to coordinate the details of events; and most recently he connects event organizers with exceptional speakers.

Along the way, he departed from the speaking industry and threw himself into the New York tech scene. After much reading, learning, networking, and creating, Ruben found himself in the number one tech accelerator in the world–Techstars. There, he worked with a group of people to bring STEM education to kids through buildable toys. In the end, there wasn’t a product-market fit and the company closed. He still has a hand in the tech community and will forever be apart of the Techstars network.

In his personal life, Ruben builds stronger communities around the country by connecting the underserved with individuals, corporations, nonprofits, or public institutions that can help them. His strong community effots include helping to raise enough money to feed over 50,000 students around the country, raising more than $100,000 for women’s health, coordinating back-to-school drives for underserved kids in the Bronx, building playground to support children with their developmental needs, and so much more.

Ruben lives in New York; in a loving relationship with Raul Sanchez, a former Obama White House staffer who now works with children with developmental needs; he enjoys karaoke and is arguably the best uncle my nieces and nephews can have.