Episode 17: Neal Sales-Griffin
“And I’m literally running up and down the boat, banging on the windows, pointing out at the water...”
About Neal
Neal Sales-Griffin grew up in the Kenwood neighborhood on the south side of Chicago with the odds stacked squarely against him. He didn’t let that stop him.
His mom applied for—and received—a grant from Oprah’s Angel Network, which offered scholarships for underprivileged families, and that allowed Neal and his sister to transfer to a high school in Hyde Park. He then won a scholarship to attend Mount Carmel, where he played football.
After graduating from Northwestern, where he served as the student body president, in 2011, at the tender age of 24, Neal co-founded the first coding bootcamp in the country, turning down an offer to work on President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign. After selling the Starter League in 2016, Neal took over as CEO at CodeNow, a Y-combinator backed startup that hosts coding workshops for students form low income backgrounds.
He is now the Managing Director at Techstars Chicago, an adjunct professor at Northwestern University, a Faculty Coach at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and a venture partner at Math Venture Partners.
He also ran for Mayor of Chicago back in 2018 (one hell of a postscript).
