Young Alumni Calling Lowell Home
By Julia Gavin
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Lowell: 'Good Jobs, Businesses, Vitality'
An alum Williams has worked with on networking and community-building projects is Bobby Tugbiyele, a 2004 graduate of the political science and history departments. As a student, he brought fellow members of the Association of Students of African Origin into the Lowell community to volunteer. And though much of his family lives in New York and his native Nigeria, Tugbiyele wanted to stay in Massachusetts after graduating. Now, as a career adviser and job developer for Community Teamwork Inc., Tugbiyele is helping to solve the unemployment issue from by working with both job-seekers and employers in greater Lowell.
“This has been my first chance to be a part of a community like Lowell where I know the neighbors and what really makes a community,” says Brooklyn-raised Tugbiyele, who lives in the city with his wife, Aleksandra Ward Tugbiyele ’08. “I’ll feel like a New Yorker forever, but I’m a Lowellian at the end of the day and I want what’s best for her: good jobs, businesses and vitality.”
Tugbiyele is also the president of the Center City Committee, a 40-year-old organization promoting and advocating for downtown Lowell. The group’s business owners, residents, workers, academics and government officials work together to improve the city for all who enter.
As Tugbiyele work to strengthen the Lowell community, he expresses a feeling shared by many UMass Lowell alumni, whether they’re lifelong citizens or new to the area: “Lowell, my work and my connections here have made me a better person.”