JACK DANGERMOND

$4.4 BILLION  SELF-MADE SCORE: * SOURCE: MAPPING SOFTWARE AGE: 74 RESIDENCE: REDLANDS, CA

PHILANTHROPY SCORE:

The godfather of digital maps started out working at his father’s plant nursery in Redlands, California. After high school, he and his then girlfriend and now wife, Laura, went to Cal Poly, where he studied environmental science and landscape architecture. In 1968 Dangermond worked with a team at Harvard that developed the first computer mapping software. The next year Dangermond moved back to Redlands to start Esri. Today the company is worth an estimated $4.4 billion and its software is used by governments, cities and corporations across the world.