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.
Badi G. Foster, Ph.D Retired University Professor at Princeton, Harvard, Tufts and Rutgers