Tope Awotona, the founder and CEO of Calendly, hails from Lagos, Nigeria, where he was born.

His lineage boasts a remarkable entrepreneurial heritage, with his maternal grandmother having established a prosperous import-export textile enterprise. Her success was exceptional for the time, enabling her to send all her children to university. Awotona's mother, a formidable figure, managed not just one, but two jobs simultaneously: co-owning a small pharmacy and serving as a manager at the prestigious Nigerian Central Bank.

Awotona's father embarked on his career as a microbiologist at Unilever but soon ventured into the world of entrepreneurship. Among his various ventures, his most significant triumph came as a distributor of industrial chemicals. These remarkable parents served as Awotona's primary role models throughout his life, inspiring him to achieve greatness in his own right.

An insightful profile by Inc. magazine in September 2019 shed light on the formidable challenges Awotona faced when launching Calendly. As a black immigrant, fundraising proved particularly arduous, underscoring the systemic hurdles he had to overcome in building his visionary company.