Dr. Ahmad Ridley was born and raised in Baltimore, MD, and graduated from the Baltimore Polytechnic Institute as class valedictorian. As a member of the first cohort of the Meyerhoff Scholars and UMBC, he completed a bachelor's degree in mathematics.

Dr. Ridley completed his Masters and PhD degrees in applied mathematics at the University of Maryland, College Park. In his PhD dissertation, he focused on optimizing the performance of telecommunication call centers using mathematical techniques such as linear algebra, differential equations, probability, and statistics, and stochastic processes.

After graduate school, Dr. Ridley worked as a systems engineer for a telecommunications consulting company named Noblis. There, he supported the federal government in analyzing multi-million dollar telecom contracts for their technical and price merit.

Currently, he works as a researcher for the Department of Defense, applying mathematics to the field of cybersecurity.