As four-year-old, Chris Courtney designed and sold his first creations door-to-door in a quest to raise enough capital to purchase a Slurpee from the neighborhood 7-Eleven.

A lifelong designer and entrepreneur, Chris has been either leading teams or launching new products at media and educational organizations for the past 20 years with notable stops at the Chicago Tribune, RedEye, Bloc, and Thinkful. In 2019, he broke away from the corporate world to create the design education startup, NewPragmatic.com.