Lots of kids grow up dreaming of playing professional football, coaching and maybe even becoming the general manager of a professional team. Growing up in South Jersey, Kwesi Adofo-Mensah was not one of them. The 1999 Cherry Hill East grad didn’t even play for the school’s team. After graduating from Princeton University with an economics degree, he worked on Wall Street and got a master’s degree in economics from Stanford University. Unsure what to do next, Adofo-Mensah took a job as an analyst with the San Francisco 49ers – and never looked back. In January, just 10 years into his football career, he was named the GM of the Minnesota Vikings.

“I know my background is unique, but when you think about this job, the job is about making decisions, building consensus in the building, combining different sources of information into one answer and having everybody behind it,” says Adofo-Mensah. “Along those lines, I don’t think there’s many people more qualified than I am.”