Testimonials

The fact that everyone has skills and an equal amount of time to offer, trade, or ‘bank,’ is a concept we still struggle with in the U.S. You gave a wonderful presentation, were affable, witty and engaging, and it was an honor to be part of the audience. More importantly, you invited us into your world as fellow human beings. Apart from that, you helped me to identify and set aside some of my own biases.

Being great in entrepreneurship isn’t always about what you do, but how you do it. Pape has been an entrepreneur since the age of 13, starting businesses to solve social issues. He has built a number of global partnerships to move this initiative forward. I consider him to be very resourceful, reasonable, and most importantly resilient. He continues to seek the next challenge to utilize his skill set, knowledge and years of direct experience of learning concepts, training and development methods and techniques.His new venture EXELEADMEN (Executive Leadership, Management and Entrepreneurship), provides leaders, entrepreneurs, and students with the knowledge, tools and network to create economic value by creating societal value and enabling a strong entrepreneurship ecosystem for youth, women and underprivileged communities. He is committed to helping organizations create shared value through social purpose and earned income. Pape takes nothing for granted, appreciates everything, and continues to give. He has never compromised his values or beliefs to advance his career, for money or to achieve company goals. He is a great entrepreneur because he starts companies to “change the world.”

I have met few people who exude leadership and compassion through their quiet presence. Pape listens and questions to understand and positions people to find their own answers. He has fundamental values that guide his decision making with a focus on people over process and a value on currency beyond money. Doing the right thing and money will follow is a rare business model to have which he does like no other. The depth of his experience brings value to his understanding of how business is performed across diverse cultures. He has spent most of his life coaching and mentoring which allows him to draw from the resources and relationships of those who respect and value his work. Pape has a gentle presence but a strong entrepreneurial spirit and astute business acumen. He is a rare breed of what I think will become the new leadership model in business creation. Canada and Nova Scotia would be privileged to have him.

Pape essentially provides the perfect model of the young social entrepreneur the world needs right now. To his long and substantial record of accomplishment in building capacity for sustainable development in West Africa, he has added major managerial achievements in the United States as a leader. I have come to know him both professionally and personally and to rely on his remarkable energy, skill, integrity and dedication.

It would be difficult to find a more accomplished networker than Pape. As part of this enterprise, he has built effective partnerships with business corporations, government agencies and multilateral development banks, demonstrating his critical skill at fundraising.

His success in making a major transition to a non-profit management role in a well-established American organization, testifies to the depth of his capabilities.  He is an excellent public speaker and has made presentations at events organized by the World Bank, USAID, Qatar Foundation, United Nations, World Food Prize, Gandhi Research Foundation to name a few.

I have known Pape for over eight years, during which I have served as one of his academic advisors, career coaches and supervisors. In terms of his intellectual ability and capacity to consistently produce quality work, I would rank Pape among the top 2% of students I have known at Princeton, Harvard, Tufts and Rutgers Universities. As a former selector of MacArthur Fellows, it is his creativity and commitment to social progress for those underserved in society, which ranks him among the best candidates I have reviewed over a five year period. His sustained commitment t, and outstanding achievements in « community organizing, » reminds me of the younger Barack Obama when he completed his law degree at Harvard. The name Pape Samb will be heard long after my generation has passed.

Pape possesses the vision and spirit usually associated with leaders. He embodies a clear code of honesty, hard work and humility. He does not ask others to do what he would not willingly do himself. These qualities and his charisma, draws others to follow him. This may also explain his ability to establish deep trust which is a critical success factor in any substantive change process. An outstanding example is how he successfully mobilized poor Muslim women from traditional African communities to become leaders of democratic associations for self-improvement and economic well-being. In addition to that, he successfully engaged African « newcomers » to Washington DC to become leaders in building new social capital through non-profit volunteerism both here and in their home countries.

His most recent accomplishment is indicative of his potential to have a long term, positive, global impact on the identification, selection and development of superior talented, rural youths to become leaders in the agricultural and entrepreneurship domains of society. His quiet leadership could be witnessed at the successful, international, youth-led, 2011 Global Youth Innovation Network conference in Benin, West Africa, where young people met to explore, discuss and select promising practices and policies aimed at social and economic progress for young rural leaders, particularly women and girls as agricultural entrepreneurs.

I enjoy working with Pape because he his smart, collaborative, and reliable. I can always count on a problem solving discussion resulting in a solution that is better than I envisioned when the discussion began. And, perhaps most importantly, he keeps focused on achieving success.

  Great presentation at INTED2014. It made me think and reflect a lot.  It was interesting and inspiring to hear about how education could develop in the future. I will definitely come back to that offer. Thanks a lot.

I have read a lot about your work and must confess you are a true reflection of what Africa can achieve.

Congrats Pape for being an exemplary, selfless and relentless role model to youths worldwide.

 I was very pleased with the leadership class because my son learned a lot of things he didn’t know before. It helped him to become more confident in public speaking and with singing publicly. I am very grateful and would recommend this course to young people so that they can gain more confidence.

I am Princess Malaika for 2013. Mr. Pape was the teacher who trained me. He was the best teacher and he taught me about leadership and school. Not only that, he was the one that made me win the competition.

What I liked about our leadership class is the creativity Mr. Pape used in his teaching and all the fun games we played. Everything I learned about leaders and followers will help me a lot in the future.