SAS Institute

James "Jim" Goodnight is the CEO of SAS Institute and is generally recognized as the wealthiest man in the state of North Carolina and one of the wealthiest in the world. He was born in Salisbury, NC and lived in Greensboro, NC until his family moved to Wilmington, North Carolina when he was 12.... As a youth, he often worked in his father's hardware store in Wilmington. His parents, Albert Goodnight and Dorothy Patterson Goodnight, are deceased. Even at a young age, mathematics and chemistry were his strongest subjects—thanks in part, he says, to a “wonderful chemistry teacher” at New Hanover High School. He applied to North Carolina State University in Raleigh and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and opted for NC State in part because of his friendship with Roman Gabriel, a star football player from Wilmington who went on to an All-American career as a quarterback for the Wolfpack. While attending State, Goodnight became friends with Bruce Griffith, who, with Goodnight's insight into technology, went on to become a billionaire in the forest products and private equity industries.
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