Cody Coleman shares his path from a difficult childhood to success in academia and business. He talks about proving that background doesn't determine your future, and what drives him to help others do the same.
On the surface level, you know, this is like, it's great. You know, I have the resume, I check all the boxes. It looks great for being a founder, an enterprise deep tech founder. I have the, you know, degrees at MIT and Stanford, done research, connected to the right people. But that doesn't really tell you, you know, who I really am. And, you know, why am I here? Why am I actually, why did I want to start a company? What am I trying to do? So I actually want to dive a little bit deeper into who I am. And I'm going to save you from my TED Talk. And instead I'm going to go through the spark notes of my story and where I came from, because that'll help you understand where I am now and where I'm trying to go. So I love this image. This was the student registration form that my mother filled out to register me to go to elementary school. And it basically captures in a single page the high level, kind of spark notes of my life. So first off, first question, city and state where Childette was born. And she wrote in Monmouth County Correctional Facility. So my mother was actually in prison when I was born. She was on federal hold. So I was put into foster care and then eventually adopted by my maternal grandparents. Eventually she was released from prison. But during that time, while she was incarcerated, she was also diagnosed as being mentally ill, probably suffering from something like paranoid schizophrenia. Eventually she was released. And my grandparents, having very big hearts for adopting me and my siblings, they also led her back into the house. So she was a part of the household growing up. But it was only my mother. You know, I actually didn't know my father or anything like that. And you can start to see kind of some of those interesting questions here. So, you know, the next question on it is, you know, please indicate the racial or ethnic designation you would want to appear in future records. Only choose one. You know, this is a different time. That's probably a problematic question to, like, ask today. I've only choose one rather than, like, you know, kind of a multiple choice thing. But, you know, my mom, she wrote in this kind of interesting answer of like, he's interracial, but he's not half white, half black. Which is kind of an odd way to answer this question. Like, wouldn't you imagine that you would just go and say what he is rather than what he's not? But then this ultimately gets to kind of my favorite question, which is father's full name. And my mother, she wrote in Rafael Sanchez, question mark. And to this day, I Still don't know my father's name. I asked my mother when I was growing up, what was my dad? I asked my grandmother what was my dad's name, and still to this day have no idea. They looked at me with blank faces, with zero idea of who this person was, which is kind of crazy to imagine that this is like someone that was so critical to the creation of my life and just nothing. There's no recollection, no anything there. And then it continues to go on. Not only did my father leave before I was born, but we grew up in poverty. So in terms of name, the place of employment or address, my mom writes in none and then in parentheses, welfare. And I grew up with one of my older brothers, Shannon, who you can see was 11 years older than me. So there was a massive age gap between me and my siblings. And we ultimately grew up with my grandparents. My grandparents grew up in the Great Depression. They only had a fourth grade education, a second grade education, but they worked really, really hard in order to have a house and to actually be able to provide for their family. So for me growing up, we kind of started from really nothing. We just had my grandparents, Social Security and welfare to live off of and a roof over our heads. And Winslow Township High School, which is, you know, I love it. I love Winslow. I love the teachers there because they made, you know, all of this possible for me and encouraging me and believing in me. But it wasn't a great high school. We were just a poor public high school in New Jersey. We're ranked 300 out of 322 schools. I was the first student from my high school to ever go to mit. And part of that, part of this whole thing was it was originally out of survival. Growing up, I wasn't athletic. I didn't have any musical abilities or anything like that. And kind of at home, it was a hostile environment, actually. My biological mom actually loved cats and dogs and had a dream of starting her own pet shop one day, but she wasn't that organized. So we had a lot of cats and dogs in the house. Thirteen cats or 12 dogs, something like that. The only problem was I was actually allergic to those cats and dogs. So all I wanted to do kind of growing up was just survive to actually get out of that environment and to just be able to have kind of a normal life where I could afford the things that I needed and do some of the things that I wanted. And through a lot of passion and perseverance and grit and just sticking with it, that became A reality for me. I went from when I first went into undergrad. I know many of you are in undergrad. My entire goal at MIT was just to be able to get a good job, to work at a place like Google so that I could afford the things that I needed and do some of the things that I wanted, like travel. And I was able to do that. And in that moment, after working, after finishing undergrad, I actually accomplished that dream, that dream that I had for my life. And I had a steady paycheck, and I could see my bank account balance going up month over month. And that was really, really great. But then something kind of switched in my head, and I went from thinking about survival to actually, I could see the picture of my life. I could see the next 40 years of what my life would be, and it would be a great life. But I wondered if I could do more, if I could actually go from survival to thriving. Ultimately, that led to what is my personal why and what is my personal mission in life, which is to demonstrate that regardless of where you come from, that you can be successful. Success can mean many different things. Originally, I wanted to go to MIT and have academic success, so get a 5.0 GPA. Didn't do that for my bachelor's, I got a 4.9, so I stayed for my master's and I got a 5.0, then for my master's of engineering. I was a skinny kid in high school. I couldn't even bench the bar. So I wanted to eventually be strong. And there's this thing called the thousand Pound Club and powerlifting, which I was able to do. And this past weekend, I ran my first half marathon and finished in under two hours. So I am kind of strong and kind of fast. And then, you know, after those two goals, I was like, you know, I want to start a billion dollar company to demonstrate kind of business or financial success. And then, you know, my last goal is to be President of the United States. So we're so far two out of four working on the third, and then we'll figure out the fourth one after that.
O processo de reconhecer limites, mesmo quando a vida parece exigir sempre mais.
Depois de tantas histórias, aprendizados e pausas necessárias, o @interior_iza está de volta
