John Sall is an American businessman, the self-made billionaire Co-founder and Executive Vice President of SAS Institute, the world's largest privately held business analytics software company. Born in Rockford, Illinois, in 1948, his career is rooted in applied mathematics and statistics.

Sall received a bachelor's degree in History from Beloit College. Feeling he graduated into a weak job market, he pursued graduate studies, earning a Master's degree in Economics from Northern Illinois University. It was there that his interest in statistics and computer science began, leading him to collaborate with James Goodnight at North Carolina State University (NC State).

• SAS Institute (Co-founder & Executive Vice President): The core private asset, the world's largest privately held business analytics software company (developer of the SAS software package). He owns about one-third of the company.
• Software Innovation: He designed, developed, and documented many of the earliest procedures of the SAS language (for time series, econometrics, and matrix algebraic manipulations).
• JMP (Founder): He developed JMP (John's Macintosh Project), a statistical discovery software, in the 1980s.
• Philanthropy: He and his wife, Ginger Sall, are heavily involved in conservation (The Nature Conservancy, WWF) and education (co-founding Cary Academy).

John Sall co-founded SAS Institute in 1976 with James Goodnight and other NC State alumni. His strategic genius was his extensive programming contributions to the SAS software package, which became the industry standard for statistical analysis (originally designed to analyze agricultural data). He pioneered features like the windowed programming environment (novel at the time).

His structural contribution is immense: pioneering the field of data analytics software and making sophisticated statistical analysis accessible to global businesses. He is known for his dedication to product development (leading the development of JMP software for over 20 years). His wealth is secured by his long-term equity stake (about one-third) in the colossal, stable, and continuously profitable privately held software giant.

John Sall's social impact is structural, stemming from SAS Institute's role in providing the foundational software for data analytics and business intelligence for global corporations and governments. His profound philanthropic contribution is his commitment to conservation and environmental protection (serving on the board of The Nature Conservancy and the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History). He and his wife co-founded Cary Academy (an independent prep school).

His structural contribution is tied to his belief in applied statistics and software as essential tools for solving complex global problems.

John Sall maintains the professional, academic style of a software executive. His attire is consistently formal and high-quality, favoring tailored suits. His aesthetic reflects stability and intellectual authority, typical of a leader in the specialized statistical software sector.

Residing in Cary, North Carolina, his luxury is the immense security and financial reward derived from his multi-billion dollar fortune. His life is dedicated to software development, statistical science, and environmental philanthropy.