Seizing every opportunity
Samuel Alia ’23 has achieved a well-rounded education through multiple internships, jobs
By Kyle Hobstetter on August 8. 2022
Samuel Alia has big plans for after he graduates: to become one of the largest, most innovative real estate developers in Baltimore.
That’s one of the reasons he chose Towson University. The Prince George’s County, Maryland, native wanted to be close to home while getting a high-quality education.
And he already has ideas on achieving his goals and helping the Baltimore area in the process.
“Everyone is a product of their environment,” Alia says. “If you look at Baltimore, certain neighborhoods don’t have the resources to grow. So if you can create the environment—developing multi-family housing and removing food deserts by adding just one grocery store—you can really change someone’s life.”
Alia initially wanted to become a psychiatrist and even interned at the National Institutes of Health but realized that wasn’t his path.
The first-generation, Nigerian American found an influence in his father, Orioha Alia. His dad owns single-family properties in Washington D.C., that only rent to families that qualify for the Housing Choice Voucher Program.
“It was cool seeing some of the families we’ve helped,” he says. “My dad came from Nigeria, and he struggled. So when he’s telling me these stories about his childhood, and I see the opportunities I have, I have to seize every [one].”
Alia has done so. He earned an associate degree in accounting from Prince George’s Community College. He then transferred to Towson University as a business systems and process major.
He joined the Baltimore chapter of the Urban Land Institute (ULI) and became the youngest member of the committee for the nonprofit’s ULI Americas Young Leaders Group.
Alia was the president of the TU chapter of the National Association of Black Accountants. He interned at accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, and, this summer, he started an internship at Enterprise Community Partners, a national nonprofit dedicated to developing affordable housing and revitalizing communities.
Alia also used his networking skills to join BLK Capital Management, a Black-owned, student-run nonprofit developed by students at Harvard University. Its focus is to promote the financial literacy of Black students through educational and professional mentorship.
Less than 5% of certified public accountants who work at accounting’s “Big Four”—Deloitte, Ernst & Young, PricewaterhouseCoopers and KMPG International—are African American. Alia wants to get his foot in the door and help those who come after him.
“Joining BLK Capital Management changed my perception,” he says. “The first couple months, it was hard for me to understand because we were having meetings with analysts from major firms, and they’re talking about companies that are worth millions and billions of dollars. It exposed me to what’s really possible, and it pushed me to want a lot more for myself.”
But along with getting the most he could from the finance world, Alia wanted to be well rounded. He worked as a legislative aide for Maryland Del. Darryl Barnes during the spring of 2022.
There he did comprehensive bill research and answered constituent correspondence. When asked why he wanted to add a political job to his ever-growing resume, Alia admitted he has an eye toward the future.
“If you look at life, everything is like a circle…one avenue or one sector or one department has an effect on the next,” he says. “I like getting a holistic view. If you do everything, you get to see the whole picture.”