AARON DAVIS

THE ENTHUSIATOR

Does your school have issues that demand immediate attention? Then Aaron Davis can empower your students and staff to take positive action before tough issues become headlines.

Based on his expertise and life experiences, he thoroughly understands the importance of making the right decisions early in life, as well as the dreaded consequences of following the wrong crowd.

Aaron has been where your students are today and he has experienced first-hand some of the success that they seek tomorrow. Because of his enthusiasm and passion for seeing young people’s lives change, he is known, nationwide, as the Enthusiator.

Aaron holds a degree in Psychology from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and was a member of the 1994 National Championship football team.

He has spent countless hours with young people in junior and senior high schools, colleges, and juvenile detention centers. He has worked directly with youth as Urban Outreach Director for Campus Life, and as an Educational Specialist for the University of Nebraska.

Aaron is co-author of the books: The Making of an Unshakeable Character and The Heart of a Difference Maker and is the author of the inspiring book, The Truth About Success.

ALBERT MENSAH

RISING FROM HUMBLE BEGINNINGS IN GHANA

Albert Mensah was born and lived the first nineteen years of his life in Ghana (Africa). Born in a mud hut and living far from any urban center. Albert’s life was hard. When he was just a small boy he carried water several miles each day to help his family survive.

Albert’s powerful message of hope and inspiration is based on his own life experience as he shares the practical skills and tools he used to become successful. Albert believes that any person can become more successful if they can conceive a powerful dream that touches the heart of their existence. Albert’s life in Africa and his amazing success since coming to America demonstrates that high achievement always begins with Aiming High in the pursuit of such a dream.

When Albert was eight he saw his first movie. It was an American movie and he saw people wearing shoes. Every person in the movie wore shoes. At that moment Albert conceived the first dream of his life: He dreamed of going to America to live! He did not know how it could become possible, but he believed he could and would. Someday he would live where everybody had shoes. Without even realizing it, Albert had deployed the most powerful principle that permits human success and achievement. Albert had learned to Aim High! He spent the next eleven year putting himself in position to turn his dream into reality.

After Albert decided he would come to America his friend in Africa teased and ridiculed him. His nickname became “States” and it was not meant to be complimentary or supportive. After all, how could a poor little boy stuck in grinding poverty wind up in America? Where would he get the money to go? How would such a thing be possible? Even if he did make it to America how would he earn a living? Was his dream to become a cab driver in New York? Any reasonable person would know that circumstances like these would be impossible to overcome. Albert heard all these gloomy predictions but never quit believing he could come to American and be successful.

During his high school years Albert wrote hundreds of American colleges trying to obtain a scholarship. Ultimately, Western Maryland College near Baltimore contacted Albert and invited him to come. This was the ticket to America Albert had relentlessly pursued for so long. Today, Albert is an American Citizen and has become one of the most sought after motivational speakers in the world. Albert Mensah, the hopeful immigrant from Africa has become America’s Dream Engineer.

Albert’s powerful message of hope and inspiration is based on his own life experience as he shares the practical skills and tools he used to become successful. Albert believes that any person can become more successful if they can conceive a powerful dream that touches the heart of their existence. Albert’s life in Africa and his amazing success since coming to America demonstrates that high achievement always begins with Aiming High in the pursuit of such a dream.

PATRICK PEREZ

MAD SKILLS FOR STUDENT’S SUCCESS

With shows like America’s Best Dance Crew and Dancing With the Stars tearing up the airwaves you might think you’ve seen it all… until now! Get your students ready for some caffeine for their dreams and some sugar for their souls because their lives are about to get a lot sweeter!

Like many pop culture icons of today Patrick “Pac Man” Perez realizes that today’s youth are a sight & sound generation in need of an attention grabbing performance. Add a twist of music with a dash of dance and BAM , you have a student success program that is right up their alley.

Patrick combines the eye-catching style of break dance (b-boying) with student success principles that deal directly with drug and alcohol prevention, academic success, drop out prevention, choices and pregnancy/STD prevention.

No other student success program offers the style and flavor that Patrick brings! Patrick has break danced to over 300,000 people across the USA, Canada, Mexico and Germany. Patrick’s passion is to use his gifts in order to reach out to those students who are in need of hope, encouragement or just a good kick in the pants to get going!

Besides speaking in schools across the country he has also been featured at:

Student Council National Conference
Family, Career and Community Leaders of America (FCCLA) National Conference
National Guard Youth National Conference
Apart from his speaking career, Patrick is also the author of “Mad Skills For Student Success: 10 Choices You Can Make to Get Better Grades, Create an Amazing

Future and Take Control of Your Crazy Life!” He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Communication Studies from the University of Texas at El Paso and a diploma in Christian Life Studies from Texas Bible Institute.
His impact in his local community garnered him the 2006 El Paso Small Business Administration’s Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award. He has also earned honors from the National Speakers Association and Toastmasters International. After hosting several of his own regional and international level street dance competitions he was approached by Red Bull Energy Drink in 2007 to collaborate on a state-wide Texas vs. New York high school break dance competition. He continues to give away hundreds of dollars in scholarships each year to winners of these positive, drug-free events!

Give your students a program they want to see with a message they need to hear!

SABRINA THOMPSON

SURVIVOR

Bold, rare and creative genius are a few words some people use to describe media maven/TV personality/small business owner, Sabrina Thompson. Thompson is no stranger to adaptation. She has done it all. From NCAA division one track & field to major network television production to teaching high school in one of the roughest neighborhoods in the country. Picture all that along with co-founding a 40,000 plus member non-profit and helming a burgeoning multimedia company and all of a sudden lasting thirty-nine days on Survivor on CBS doesn’t seem so hard. After all, being a survivor is about standing out.

Which Thompson has done since a young girl who outran the boys all the way to a track scholarship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where she competed in the 100-meter dash. A few years later with a degree in Communications and $500, she was off to NYC to start a high-profiled internship in television production at the Ricki Lake show. From there she landed a job at Columbia TriStar, Sony Pictures, and Court TV as a booking and segment producer for series on the O.J. Simpson 10th year analysis, Michael Jackson, and Kobe Bryant trials.

It’s also about being bold.

Like leaving a career in television for the humble calling of a New York City public school teacher just for the challenge, which was what Thompson did when she joined the staff of Frederick Douglass Academy VII high school. With creativity and a no-nonsense demeanor, she taught high schoolers in the roughest sections of Brooklyn and put her industry Rolodex to good use inviting celebrities and top executives to the classroom.

At the same time Sabrina was changing the world one student at a time, she was also co-helming WEEN (Women Empowerment in Entertainment Network) a program that educates young women how to be moguls and executives in the world of entertainment. Since its inception in 2007, the coalition has gained over 43,000 members across the country, receiving major network press from the New York Post, BET, CNN, and MSNBC. As a member of the founding board, Thompson plays a fundamental role in organizing the annual WEEN Academy, a six-week course designed to rigorously educate 25 promising industry leaders in the field of business and marketing.

As if that wasn’t enough, Thompson also launched beanpYe (www.beanpye.com), a jewelry line comprised of her own handcrafted bracelets, earrings, and necklaces for authentic fashion lovers. These tropically themed pieces, inspired by art from Samoa and Fiji, graced the pages of prominent magazines and adorning the wrists, necks, and earlobes of Grammy award-winning Alicia Keys, Jill Scott, Nelly Furtado, Joss Stone and India.Arie.

It’s safe to say that as an entrepreneur and a young leader, Thompson seeks out challenges. But arguably her greatest challenge sought her in the form of an email from a casting producer informing her that she was being considered on Survivor’s twenty-fourth season. This was tremendous given that she hadn’t even sent in an application. “One of the women they were recruiting for the show had my same exact name. They kept Googling information on her, but kept getting my picture and info instead. They simply said, ‘we like this Sabrina better” and called me.”

And like that Thompson was off to the treacherous mangroves of Upolu, Samoa for Survivor: One World. Using the skills she accrued from teaching in an inner-city schools—analyzing personalities, knowing when to be authoritative, when to play the background—she competed for thirty-nine days, lasting all the way to the final council where she finished as the runner up for the million dollar cash prize. ”I didn’t have to come out of character that much in order to get far,” Sabrina says, reflecting on her success. “I played a game that I can be proud of, my parents can be proud of, and my community can proud of.”

Now that Sabrina has proven she is a survivor, she is steadily turning into a household name. Her recently launched KUU (“prominent” in Swahili) Photography boasts a stunning online portfolio of portraits and landscapes that have been featured on Entertainment Tonight and short films on gang prevention and the epidemic of fatherless homes.