Neal E. Boyd (born November 18, 1975) is an American pop opera singer. He is best known as the 2008 winner of America's Got Talent.An Aflac insurance salesman, he grew up in Sikeston, Missouri. He discovered operatic music in junior high school when his older brother Michael was forced to do a school project involving classical music and brought home a CD of the Three Tenors. His brother had little appreciation for the music, but Neal was so enamored by the passion and skill of the famous trio that he started practicing how to sing in Luciano Pavarotti's and Plácido Domingo's operatic styles. A creative seed was planted, and Neal went on to study speech communications, political science, and music at Southeast Missouri State University and the University of Missouri, graduating from both universities in May 2001. He was the winner of the Music Teachers National Association (MTNA) Vocal Collegiate Championship in 2000 while in the voice studio of Professor Ann Harrell of UM-Columbia. This national win led to his solo debut at New York City's famed Carnegie Hall in March 2001. After teaching music for a year in his hometown of Sikeston, MO, he later attended the New England Conservatory in Boston, MA to study opera—which led to a lead role, the slave "York" in Michael Ching's World Premier Opera "Corps of Discovery, A Musical Journey," commissioned by UM-Columbia. Neal has hopes of finally realizing his dream of becoming an international opera star and inspiring the younger generations the way he was inspired.