Freddie Figgers, founder and CEO of Figgers Wireless—a telecommunications firm valued at over $62.3 million dollars—had a rough start to life. He was found abandoned near a dumpster when he was a newborn.

Luckily, Figgers was adopted by Nathan and Betty, who gave the little boy a home and love.

“It’s amazing that you can meet people like that,” Figgers said of his adoptive parents. “I have never met my biological parents […] I have never had the interest.”

As a kid, Figgers was interested in playing with electronics. Before his 10th birthday, he started disassembling and reassembling a 1989 computer his dad had given him.

The ambitious youth got his first job as a computer technician. When he was 15, he started to develop a cloud database in his backyard. Figgers elected to work rather than finish his college education, and before the age of 30, he had his own telecommunications company.

Figgers isn’t just interested in telecommunications for its own sake—he wants to use technology to help people, especially with health conditions. When he was younger, he started inventing devices to help his adoptive father, who had Alzheimer’s. Figgers cleverly put a two-way communication device and a GPS tracker in his father’s shoes—that way, Figgers would be able to find his dad as well as talk to him at any moment.

Currently, Figgers is working on a way to create devices that will help people with diabetes.

Diabetes is a major public health problem that is approaching epidemic proportions globally. The prevalence of diabetes... Posted by Freddie Figgers on Tuesday, August 20, 2019

“Diabetes is a major public health problem that is approaching epidemic proportions globally,” Figgers wrote on Facebook in August. “The prevalence of diabetes is rising at an alarming rate. Nationwide, 1 in 12 adults has diabetes, and type 2 diabetes has become a commonplace childhood disease as well.”

Figgers also believes in the importance of giving back. He donated 20 computers to Sarasota Military Academy as a back-to-school initiative.