Samuel Acevedo : Director HERC

Samuel Acevedo is Director of the church-based Boston Higher Education Resource Center (HERC). The Boston HERC is one of the first of five such sites throughout New England dedicated to the ministry of helping inner-city young people go to college. Since its inception in 1999, the Boston HERC has served over 1,000 kids. The Boston HERC serves a remarkably diverse community through an SAT program, a Christ-centered mentor program, computer-literacy and ESL programs, and a recently-introduced MCAS prep program which is currently being replicated throughout the other HERC sites across the state.

Mr. Acevedo was born in New York City on October 4, 1963. He is the son of Puerto Rican pastors and lived in the Spanish Harlem and South Bronx sections of New York until he and his family moved to Orlando, Florida in 1972. He attended Stetson University in DeLand, Florida and graduated in 1985 with a Bachelor’s Degree in English. Mr. Acevedo then attended law school in Boston, Massachusetts, graduating cum laude from Boston College Law School in 1993. After law school, Mr. Acevedo joined the New York City Law Department where he prosecuted juvenile delinquency cases in New York City’s Family Court; he did so while serving as Evangelism Pastor of Salem Pentecostal Temple in the South Bronx.

Mr. Acevedo returned to Boston in November 1999 to serve as Director of the Boston HERC. The Center is based in the Congregación León de Judá, a Latino church in Roxbury where Mr. Acevedo serves as an associate pastor. Mr. Acevedo serves on the board of Boston Trinity Academy, the Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary’s Center for Urban Ministry and Education (CUME), Straight Ahead Ministries, Nuestra Comunidad Development Corporation and the Roxbury Presbyterian Church Social Impact Center. He and his wife Marina were married in July of 2001.