An engineering student who built a working suit of armour in a college workshop, which is the part of the story that gets her into trouble.
Riri Williams is introduced by consequence rather than by origin. She built a vibranium detector as coursework, the CIA used it, and Wakanda and Talokan both concluded she was a threat. She is a teenager in a dorm room being hunted by two countries.
The series that follows moves her home to Chicago and makes the money the problem: genius is not enough to build the thing she can already design, so she takes the funding that is available. Dominique Thorne plays her as a person who is used to being the smartest one present and has not yet learned what that costs.