Richard FOLLY is an entrepreneur, educator, and speaker who is passionate about leveraging technology and entrepreneurship to address global pressing challenges. Coming from humble background, Richard was born into a family of 22 children in Tabligbo, a small industrial city in Togo. His father was a heavy equipment operator in the cement production plant, and his mother a trader. Both were also farmers.

As a young boy, Richard had a dream in which he was in a spaceship that landed on the Moon. However, his pre-university focus on literature prevented him from enrolling in a scientific faculty at the university, leaving geography as the closest option for him to pursue his space dream. Fortunately, during his geography studies, Richard discovered his passion for technology, which he simultaneously followed. He learnt GIS tools on his own and with a group of friends, as the faculty had no infrastructure to teach such skills at the time. This eventually led him to embrace geospatial technology. After graduating, he secured a Professional Development Experience at NASA, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that introduced him to the professional world of space exploration, thanks to the Mandela Washington Fellowship program.