Jeri Ellsworth

Ellsworth was born in Georgia and grew up in the towns of Dallas, Oregon and Yamhill, Oregon. Her mother died when she was one. Ellsworth was raised by her father, Jim, a car mechanic and Mobil service station owner.

When she was eight years old, she disassembled her toys to learn how they worked. In response her father stopped buying toys, put an empty box at his work saying "bring your broken electronic gizmos", and every few weeks, gave them to her. She started making simple modifications to them. She persuaded her father to let her use a Commodore 64 computer which had been purchased for her brother. She taught herself to program by reading the manual. She earned spending money working for her father, pumping gas, cleaning wrenches, replacing oil filters, and other "mechanical things".

In high school, she drove dirt track racing cars with her father and began designing new models in his workshop, eventually selling custom race cars. She dropped out of high school to continue the business.

Ellsworth is a pinball aficionado and owns over 80 pinball machines. In 2016, she became a licensed amateur radio operator, holding an Extra Class license with callsign AI6TK.