38: Sonny Garg
Image via Wind Systems Magazine
About Sonny
Sonny Garg is a vulture culture, bear hugger, sushi lover, fiction aficionado, and a man who has driven change on a scale that would please even his notoriously difficult to please father.
Sonny was born to Indian immigrants, who immediately began to instill in him what all immigrant parents instill in their children - unyielding drive and tenacity, an inhuman work ethic driven by daily doses of guilt and shame, and let’s not forget a constant sense of inadequacy stemming from trying to please someone for whom nothing short of perfection will ever be enough.
And, like many immigrant kids, Sonny has converted this tough love into a career spanning the public, private, and non-profit arenas, driving the kind of change that makes one wonder if he has cloned himself.
After a stint in research at the University of Chicago, Sonny served as Assistant to Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, leading the conceptualization and creation of World Business Chicago. Having earned his public service stripes, he was appointed a White House Fellow by President Clinton, where he served as a senior aide to the Deputy Director of the Office of Management & Budget.
After a successful exit in the startup world, Sonny began what would become his longest role yet, rising to become the Chief Information and Innovation Officer of Exelon, the $40 billion public utility, where he transitioned the company from coal generating plants into renewables, founded the Emerging Technologies department to identify and implement innovative tech, and served on the investment committee for Exelon’s venture fund.
Jumping back into the world of tech, Sonny launched and grew the Energy Division at industrial AI company Uptake, before heading to the investment side, working in seed-stage investments at DNS Capital, the family office for Gigi Pritzker and Michael Pucker.
Ever the giver, Sonny has been passing down his wisdom to the hungry young minds at University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, where he is a Distinguished Executive-in-Residence.
Sonny earned an M.B.A. and a B.A. at the University of Chicago, and, as he wrote in his underground anti-establishment prep school newspaper “the other side,” isn’t it ironic… that he would eventually fulfill his father’s dream of one of his kids going to Harvard, getting his MPP from the Kennedy School of Government.
These days, Sonny helps early stage companies with go to market strategies, sits on the boards of various companies, and helps nonprofits make an impact.