 Born in Nottingham in 1951 of a Nigerian father and a British mother, Olisa's technology career commenced in the 1970s at IBM after he won a scholarship while an undergraduate at the University of Cambridge, where he studied Natural Sciences and then Social, Political and Management Sciences at Fitzwilliam College.Olisa married Julia Sherwood in Cambridge in 1976.At IBM he held various posts before joining Wang Laboratories in 1981.