You are Something
The true story of Sam Neelam overcoming incredible odds to live the American dream
This is a paid political advertisement, paid for and approved by Sam Neelam, for Polk County School Board, District 5.
The journey to running for Polk County School Board District 5 didn’t happen overnight. It started with a Catholic Father who visited a tiny village in southern India.
Sam Neelam was 18 months old when his mother died of cholera. His sister was just 11 days old.
The village was small enough that today, it is still considered a hamlet. When his mother fell ill, she was taken to the nearest town in a bullock cart, pulled by an ox. She did not survive the trip, leaving his 19-year-old father with two young children.
The priest visited every few months and, after seeing their situation, told Neelam’s father that he could take Sam, now 3 years old, to a place where he would be fed and educated.
Neelam lived in the hostels at Don Bosco and Andhra Loyola College until he was 21. Over the years both grew into prominent boarding schools and colleges, though they continue to serve at-risk youth and children.
He slept on a thin mat on the floor of a dormitory beside other orphans and children whose families could not feed them. He says the doors were mostly broken, but they were beautiful days.
“I never complain about that life,” he said about growing up there. “We were kids. We loved it.”
He was 14 years old before he saw his father again.
Neelam recalled many teachers, priests and nuns who ran the school as making a big impact during his early years, but there was something extra special about Father Bala Shouri. He was the same priest who took young Neelam under his wing to give him a life filled with opportunities and choices, all because he saw something more than just a hungry child in his care.
“I honestly think that he’s part of me,” Neelam said. “He’s a father, when I didn’t know my biological father.”
In second grade, Father Bala Shouri made him a class leader. Then an altar boy and a dormitory leader. It wasn’t until his first day of college that he ever saw a computer. He described it as a typewriter with a TV. Classmates laughed, but that didn’t stop him from learning computer coding.
After college, he went on to earn a master’s degree in mathematics and computer science at the University of Hyderabad. He hasn’t stopped using a computer since.
When Neelam arrived in the U.S. in 1999 with a degree and big hopes in the American Dream, the first thing he asked to do was see Bell Labs in New Jersey, where he says the Unix operating system and the C programming language were born.
“It looked like a bunch of machines,” he said, “but I felt like it was the greatest church you can imagine.”
Neelam called it a very emotional experience, as he stood in the place that produced the languages his new life was built on.
It’s no surprise he went to work for AT&T that same year, then Wall Street. It wasn’t long before he built a technology company of his own.
Even in the midst of a successful career, he has never taken for granted the education that paved the way for his success, and it’s why he is running for the school board. He wants to make sure kids in Polk County get the same opportunities by keeping good teachers and staff with higher wages, supporting students and teachers in the classroom, and making sure every dollar counts.
He and his wife have two daughters, both now in college. He credits her with most of the raising, though he says early on, there were many sleepless nights constantly checking to make sure the girls were still breathing.
As they got older, they stayed involved in education, he as a mentor, and his wife volunteering through a school-based food program she started for hungry kids who needed more than lunch to make it through the day. For three years, there were frequent trips to Costco for grapes, oranges, and lots and lots of snacks.
Neelam is the CEO for the Odin Group, a technology-focused real estate firm located here in Florida. He is a board trustee of Florida Polytechnic University, where he serves on the Academic Enterprise, Research, and Student Success Committee. He also sits on the board of Florida TaxWatch, the state’s nonpartisan research institute and government watchdog, something he says he fell into after meeting the former lieutenant governor.
Both roles come down to the same questions: Where does the money go? And what are the results?
It was at Florida Poly, looking at how many first-year students were not staying in college, that he began to think the problem started earlier. The data revealed that high school students were underprepared for college, and that meant filling in the gaps to help them succeed.
He pushed the university’s board on curriculum and instructional materials and worked with department heads on the issue. As they worked together, he said, the numbers began to improve.
Now he’s ready to do the same on the Polk County School Board.
Polk County Public Schools runs on almost $2.5 billion a year, and Neelam wants more of it traced to real results. His answer is data. He points to the dashboards Florida Poly’s administrators already use, where a single screen shows what is working and what is not, and says the district could do the same without spending anything new.
From there, he says, the work is clearing away what does not produce results, like School Action Plans that get copied and pasted year after year, and the red tape that makes it difficult for nonprofit organizations active in neighboring counties to partner with Polk County schools.
None of that costs money, he argues, and that is the point.
He is also clear that no individual school board member can make changes on his own.
“I can have a great idea, but if I don’t have the right team, my idea goes nowhere,” he said. “I am going to convince people with data points and real facts.”
Father Bala Shouri died a few years ago. Neelam saw him twice after coming to America, and he knew the old priest was proud of the small boy he watched become a man, a father, and a leader.
“He always looked at me and said, I know since childhood, you are something,” Neelam said. “If he were living now, and knew that I became a board member in the United States, believe me, he would be celebrating.”
This is paid content. It was written and produced by The Citrus Tea News on behalf of the advertiser and was reviewed and approved by the advertiser before publication. It is not news reporting and does not reflect an endorsement by The Citrus Tea News, which does not endorse candidates.
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