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Adofo-Mensah is Vikings’ choice for GM
Kwesi Adofo-Mensah spent his first eight years out of Princeton on Wall Street, working as a commodities trader and a portfolio manager.
Crossing the country to continue his studies and become an economics professor at Stanford was only the start of a sharp turn on the career path that led him to the NFL.
“I was going to wear a tweed jacket and glasses and teach students,” Adofo-Mensah said, “and I still had a lot of decisionmaking left in me. I wanted to be a part of it in a practical sense.”
Now he's the general manager of the Minnesota Vikings, a decidedly unconventional decision by a consistently competitive franchise that has played 61 seasons without winning a championship.
“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," AdofoMensah
said at his introductory news conference last week Thursday. “Along those lines, I don't think there's many people more qualified than I am."
The emotional stability that served him well in the volatility that exists in the financial industry, Adofo-Mensah said, comes in handy in the high-intensity, highstakes world of pro football. The ability to pick the right stocks at the right price is also not all that unlike building an NFL roster through free agency and the draft under a salary cap system.
“It's just a different canvas with the same art, I'd say,” he said.
Though he comes without on-field experience, the 40-year-old Adofo-Mensah has nine seasons in the league on his resume. He started with the San Francisco 49ers in 2013 in the research and development department, after deciding the PhD program at Stanford was not his calling. His foot in the door was made possible through a connection made at a sports analytics conference with Brian Hampton, now the vice president of football administration with the 49ers.
As he directed the club's efforts to use advanced quantitative methods for game strategy and personnel evaluation, the 49ers promoted him twice. Then he left in 2020 for Cleveland to become vice president of football operations, the top assistant to general manager Andrew Berry.
“In the NFL, I've learned from some great teachers. I went in not thinking I knew anything, and I think a lot of times an impediment to learning is trying to affirm what you already think or not being open hearted and open minded about learning," said Adofo-Mensah, whose parents emigrated from Ghana and settled in New Jersey. His mother and his fiancee accompanied him on Thursday.
His profile elevated in part by the NFL's effort to put more minorities in leadership positions around the league, Adofo-Mensah came with the full backing of his boss of two years, Berry, who lauded his people skills and natural curiosity.
When they debriefed after Adofo-Mensah's initial video interview with the Vikings on Jan. 17, Berry observed that his deputy was “buzzing” after his first interaction with Vikings owners Zygi Wilf and Mark Wilf and the other key leaders from the organization involved in the search process.
Realizing that Adofo-Mensah was on a track to eventually run a team, Berry intentionally tasked him with many aspects of the player evaluation and contract negotiation side of the job that Adofo-Mensah wasn't exposed to in research and development.