Matthew Almeida

Matthew Almeida wasn’t sold on the idea of attending college. He was more interested in selling houses.

“I grew up watching HGTV with my mom. Who didn’t want to be like the Property Brothers?” says Almeida, who took the idea a step further than most: He got his real estate license during his senior year of high school in North Andover, Massachusetts, and apprenticed with local agents.

Still, he went through the motions of applying to a few colleges. When he got his acceptance letter from UMass Lowell, he reconsidered his plans.

“It was affordable, and I could commute from home,” he says. “I knew that if there was any school where I could make it work, it would be this one.”

Almeida enrolled in the Manning School of Business with a concentration in finance. For his 17th birthday, his dad, Jorge, had set him up with a $100 brokerage account on Robinhood. While Almeida initially lost “quite a bit of money” from his dishwashing job, he learned how to trade and fell in love with the financial markets.

At UML, Almeida has been able to synergize his interests in real estate and finance through coursework, student organizations and career-connected experiences — including a nine-week property operations internship with real estate development firm Rockefeller Group in New York City during the summer before his senior year.

“It was an incredible opportunity,” says Almeida, who worked in three of Rockefeller Group’s core holdings in midtown Manhattan, analyzing budgets and leases, engaging with tenants and supporting the firm’s environmental, social and governance initiatives. One of the buildings that Almeida helped manage is the headquarters of Barclays, giving him a behind-the-scenes look at one of the largest investment banks in the world.

Almeida landed the opportunity — and a scholarship — thanks to a prior internship with Project Destined, a program that introduces undergraduates from diverse communities to careers in real estate while helping them build their technical, financial and leadership skills.

“One thing leads to another,” says Almeida, who has thrown himself into many things at UML since moving on to campus his sophomore year. He has served as president of the Real Estate Network Association and Delta Kappa Phi fraternity and vice president of the Finance Society and the student chapter of Association of Latino Professionals for America. He is also a student ambassador for the Manning School, works part-time in the Dean’s Office and has also traveled to Chicago and Las Vegas for student conferences.

“I can’t see myself getting all these things that I wanted from any other school,” says Almeida, who is going to continue at UML for a master of science in finance through the Bachelor’s-to-Master’s Program.

He’s open to a career in commercial real estate or investment banking — paths that trace back to the influence of his parents, who immigrated to the United States from São Paulo, Brazil.

Whenever Almeida hits a bump in his studies, he thinks of his mom, Ruchelly, who got an associate degree from Bunker Hill Community College and a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Tufts University while raising three kids.

“She really inspired me, especially coming to college,” Almeida says. “When I was younger, I wasn’t really grateful for that. But now I see how it helped me develop as a person — and as a son.”