Biography

Mareme’s career with CorpsAfrica began in 2016, when she became the very first staff member hired for the Senegal office. Over six years as Deputy Country Director, she contributed to building the country program from the ground up: establishing its foundational operations, mentoring the first five Volunteer cohorts, and assembling the strategic partner network that anchors CorpsAfrica’s presence in Senegal today.

Her results carried her to the global level. As Country Office Liaison, she scouted and supported the launch of new country programs. Then, as Director of Program Delivery and Policy, she architected the global programmatic frameworks supporting more than 50 frontline staff across ten countries — and steered flagship initiatives including the Exchange Volunteer Program and CorpsAfrica Green.

Mareme is also one of African civil society’s clearest voices on climate. She led CorpsAfrica’s successful admission as an official UNFCCC observer organization and represented it at COP26, COP27, and COP28. At home, she pioneered the Local Conference of Youth on Climate (LCOY Senegal), mobilizing over 1,000 young changemakers across four editions. She has also served on the African Union Volunteer Committee.

What sets Mareme apart is altitude range. Few leaders have sat with a first-year Volunteer in a rural village in the morning and shaped continental program policy in the afternoon — and fewer still can translate fluently between the two. Her frameworks work because they were built from the ground she once stood on. Now, having marked ten years with CorpsAfrica in 2026, Mareme returns to where it all began — as Country Director of CorpsAfrica/Senegal — to scale community-led development and youth volunteerism across the country and to prepare the next generation of African leaders to lead it themselves.

Mareme holds a Master’s degree in Environmental Studies from Université Gaston Berger de Saint-Louis (High Honors). She is a recipient of the Kaala de Sanar Award for Best Student and the GESTES Gender Prize for advancing women’s leadership. She is based in Dakar, Senegal and fluent in both French and English.