About Papa

I am Papa and welcome to my garden site.  My real name is Sam and I have been an avid gardener for my whole life.  Both of my grandfathers (and I am told my great-grandfathers were too!) were farmers and my Dad loved gardening roses, fruits and vegetables, houseplants and more.  Growing up we had a grow room in the basement for starting plants and a greenhouse and sunroom.  I am proud to say I am a 4th generation gardener and am the proud papa of generation number 5!

I am a professional in the drug, medical device and biologic world.  I am fortunate to have found a company that operates with a great, true respect and responsibility for the patient.  My role in the company is as the head of quality assurance.  My days are filled with challenges and meaning.  I have an excellent team working for me and we are in constant interaction with the clinical, medical, testing, manufacturing, marketing, legal, IT, planning and management groups located across the country and around the world.  My job is based in Silver Spring, MD but I can often be found strolling the halls of our other locations in D.C.; Research Triangle Park, NC; Melbourne, FL, London, UK; Elsenfeld, Germany, or the dozens of locations where we do clinical field work and work with other companies as partners.

I am also an entrepreneur.  It happened quite by chance.  In the early days of the web I was already well into my 5th or 6th computer and had begun building my own to take advantage fo the latest and greatest hardware for gaming.  In those early days gaming took a special dedication and few games worked out-of-the-box; requiring special hardware and tricky software configurations.  Well, I spent quite a bit of time and money on my setup and decided to share my game hardware opinion online.  I learned web publishing and put together a website that soon got the attention of the manufacturers of the gear I featured.  I received review gear from all of the companies including Microsoft, Logitech, Saitek, etc. just to name a few.  I would never accepted ads, fees or any other compensation from the manufacturers.  After getting tons of request on where readers could find these things I reviewed I started to put links to online stores into the reviews.  When these online stores checked their traffic logs they saw the volume of traffic and sales I was delivering to them for free.  One of them, Computer Geeks introduced me to their affiliate program and the rest is history.

It’s the best job I could have ever wished for- but it does not define me or my life- it is only a part of it.  Even bigger, more important elements of who I am are my wife of over 10 years and my son born to us in the life-changing year that was 2004.    Who knew how much impact an 8 pound ball of need and innocence would have on my life?  actually plenty of people knew but I didn’t believe them…

So now I am Papa and I have a garden.  I’ve always had a garden but now I share it with my wife and more importantly my son- creating yet another generation of nature appreciation.  I revel in his tenderness and caring for plants, animals and people.  I am his proud papa and we want to share our garden with you.

Sam Mancuso

Papa, Papa’s Garden