How my journey began

Richard Margolin is the co-founder and was the Chief Executive Officer and Chief Technology Officer of RoboKind, over the past 17 years has developed some of the world’s most recognizable facially expressive and socially interactive robots. An accomplished researcher, engineer, public speaker, artist and executive, Richard’s mission is to make a positive impact by working to make technology and education exciting, accessible, and equitable for everyone. Recently he has been featured in Men’s Health for his origami creations.

Richard began his wide-ranging entrepreneurial career at age 13 with Duct Tape Things, a duct tape apparel business which produced duct tape wallets, handbags, clothes and accessories. At 17 he started a t-shirt business which created shirts with his own face on them and sold more than 3500 shirts.

Richard studied Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, and Mechanical Engineering at the University of Texas at Arlington. He has been involved with an impressive array of research projects over the years. To name a few, he has helped develop purification methods for carbon nanotubes, worked in genetics on the Human Genome Project at the UT Southwestern Bioinformatics Lab, and worked with Airforce Research Labs, where he developed the first ever moving test rig for more accurate testing of military gas masks and medical respirators.

He was the engineering director for Hanson Robotics where led a team in the design and creation of human-scale, human-realistic robots some of which were used to test interaction and learning theories for people with autism. This work went on to inspire him to found RoboKind, with the goal of making that effective approach available to in classrooms and therapy center.

Since 2011, Richard has served as the Chief Technology Officer of RoboKind, where he has led the design and development of its multiple generations of robots, including the development of new and unique skin materials and manufacturing processes that allow for quality facial expressions at significantly lower costs than previously possible. Because of this work, RoboKind is the only company in the world who can manufacture realistic facially-expressive robots at an affordable and accessible price point.  Additionally, Richard leads technology development and his teams create new software and content products for the company.

Richard has received numerous awards and accolades for his impactful work and leadership at RoboKind. He is a Forbes Technology Council member, a 2017 Tech Titan, a 2018 Red Herring Top 100 North America and Global winner for the year’s most promising private technology ventures, and the 2019 EY Entrepreneur of the Year winner in the Social Impact category. In 2018, The American Society of Mechanical Engineers awarded Richard and RoboKind the Emerging Technology Award in Robotics; other winners of this prestigious award included IDE Technologies, GE Renewable Energy, Airbus, and Microsoft HoloLens.

In 2019 and 2020, the EdTech Leadership Awards recognized Richard in the “Founder/CEO” category, and D CEO Magazine recognized him as an “Outstanding CTO” in the Emerging Companies category. He was also named to Dallas’ 40 Under 40 list, and most recently, the D CEO 500 Most Powerful Business Leaders in Dallas-Fort Worth for 2020 and 2021.

For a more up to date in depth CV see my linked in profile.