Jeffrey (above left) and Adilson (above right) Lopes couldn’t be more alike: They’re identical twins who attended Suffolk together, earning both undergrad and graduate degrees.
Then again, they couldn’t be more different: Jeffrey, BS ’12, MPA ’14, is a detective with the Boston Police Department and president of the Massachusetts Association of Minority Law Enforcement Officers (MAMLEO), while Adilson, BSBA ’12, MBA ’15, is a banker turned tech executive with AWS, Amazon’s cloud computing platform.
Yet while they’ve each carved out their own paths, they remain the other’s lodestar—the person who knows them best, cheers them on, holds them accountable. Having each other’s back began when they were boys growing up in Dorchester, where “having a twin brother probably kept me out of trouble and helped get me to where I am today,” Jeffrey says.
Another powerful motivator: their mother, an émigré from the Cape Verde Islands “who gave us the right core values,” Adilson says. Both their parents worked 80-hour weeks to ensure their children could get ahead and become the first members of the family to attend college. The twins each earned the Nathan Miller Scholarship, a full tuition scholarship awarded to Boston Public School graduates.
Even as Boston natives, the Lopeses say Suffolk felt like a new world, with classmates from around the globe and classes and clubs that set them on the course to their future careers. Jeffrey dove headfirst into student leadership, working with the Black Student Union and the Student Government Association, and serving as a Diversity Peer Educator.
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Photography by Michael J. Clarke
FEATURES
| Fall 2022
By Michael Blanding with reporting by Morgan Baker
"All these things awakened my passion for social justice and for giving back to the community,” he says. “Now I work in the government sector where I can be a champion for these issues.”
Jeffrey, who went on to earn a PhD in law and policy at Northeastern, brings a strong community-policing approach to his work and a commitment to being a change agent. “Social justice and policing can mix when it’s done right,” he says. “We can create policies that benefit the community; we can create conversation.” And through his work with MAMLEO, he advocates for internal reforms around diversity and equity within police departments in the state.
For his part, Adilson’s passion was always for business. In high school, he set a goal to one day earn $50,000 a year. After taking classes in organizational behavior and marketing at Suffolk, however, he set his sights higher. While still a student, he began working at Bank of America, and by the time he graduated he had already met and surpassed his early goal.
Suffolk also taught him to take advantage of opportunity and to be ready to pivot. After working in banking for five years, he joined a program for MBAs at Microsoft, making a shift into the technology sector. While the learning curve can be steep, the rewards have been significant, he says. “I had to be comfortable being uncomfortable, and that’s OK. We have to know that we can’t limit ourselves to where we are today. We have to continue pushing the envelope.”
When Jeffrey Lopes (left) earned a Suffolk 10 Under Alumni Award earlier this year, Adilson was there to cheer him on.