Riccardo Spagni is the Founder & Project Lead at Monero, who stewards of the Monero Project, and is also the lead maintainer of the Monero project. With an academic background in informatics and logistics. Ricccardo spent many years in software development, before starting a business in the import/export industry with his wife. Due to the success of that business, he had enough freedom to start tinkering with Bitcoin early in 2011. In 2012, he became involved in various cryptocurrency related projects, and in 2017 he launched Globee, a multi-currency payment processor. Riccardo and his wife live along the Garden Route on the coast of South Africa, where he spends weekends packrafting, hanging out with their dogs, building and flying multicopters and playing with LEGO.