Barry Lam was born in Shanghai in 1949, but due to the revolution of the same year his family moved to Hong Kong. Barry went to Taiwan to university gaining both a bachelor’s and master’s electrical engineering degree at National Taiwan University and settled and became a citizen of his new country.

Along with some friends from university, Barry Lam founded a company that manufactured pocket calculators - Kinpo Electronics. Barry was the president and took the company in a few years to the largest contract producer of calculators in the world.

Convinced that the future lay in notebook computers, Barry left Kinpo in the 1988 and founded Quanta Computer. He was right, Quanta had a tyurnover of close to $24 billion by 2007 and today designs and manufactures products for such clients as Apple, Compaq, Sharp, Blackberry and Dell.

Since his wealth Barry Lam has become known for his philanthropy, especially in arts, culture and education.