Richard Welton Fisher, born in 1949, grew up in Mexico as a first-generation American. He attended the United States Naval Academy before transferring to Harvard University, where he earned a bachelor's degree in economics in 1971. He also studied Latin American studies at Hertford College, Oxford, from 1972 to 1973, and completed an M.
B.A. from the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University in 1975.