Diego Diaz BA’26, MBA’27 believes in the American Dream of homeownership, even as soaring costs push it further out of reach. Committed to addressing the housing crisis, Diaz knew his advocacy had to go beyond small-scale contributions if he wanted to make a real impact. With the foundation he’s established at Willamette as a BA/MBA combined degree student, Diaz has been able to take his advocacy for affordable housing from the steps of Oregon’s state capitol to national housing policy conversations.
“I’m focused on restorative economic justice pertaining to housing. To me, owning a home is part of the American Dream,” Diaz, who is a first-generation American, says. “Yet, there are virtually no starter homes for working class people. In the 1950s, homes under 1,400 square feet used to be more than seventy percent of all new builds in the US. Now, it’s less than seven percent.”
In April 2025, he lobbied at the state capitol in Salem for a bill that would legalize new forms of “missing middle” developments on single family lots, which was eventually signed by Governor Tina Kotek. Then he organized a housing advocacy forum that brought Representative Tom Anderson to campus and started Salem’s 160-member branch of YIMBY (“Yes in My Backyard”) Action Organizers that includes Willamette students and members of the public to work towards solutions to the housing crisis.
That was only the beginning for Diaz. He went on to develop a proposal for a social benefit corporation dedicated to building multiple pre-fabricated cottage-style starter homes on underutilized, single-home lots.
His proposal was recognized in September at the University of Utah’s 24-hour Hack-a-House competition — a nationwide call for projects from students to help create solutions for the housing affordability crisis. Diaz, a team of one, placed first in the finance innovation category against teams from universities including Harvard, Columbia, and UCLA.
His proposal is now under review by co-chair of the Housing Crisis Task Force Utah Governor Spencer Cox and the CEO of Ivory Homes, the biggest home builder in Utah. Diaz, who is only 20-years-old, is undertaking his work as a fellow for the National Community Investment Coalition to enforce Columbia Bank’s $8.1 billion community benefit agreement.
Diaz’s proposal is intimately tied with his undergraduate and MBA education at Willamette. He received guidance on pitching and project scope from Professor and JELD-WEN Chair in Free Enterprise James Ostler and Associate Professor of Economics Jonathan Thompson.
In the face of stiff competition from schools across the nation, Diaz wouldn’t change a thing about his educational journey. Willamette’s proximity to the Oregon state capitol, Public and Nonprofit Management MBA Concentration, and ample financial aid support all contributed to his decision to undertake his work at Willamette.
“Willamette is an institution that not only exhibits excellence in actual practice, but also in its mission-driven commitment to providing an opportunity for young change-makers from less-advantaged backgrounds to make an impact,” he shares. “The university motto, ‘Not unto ourselves alone are we born,’ is meaningfully embodied.”
Diaz is the son of a single mother who immigrated alone to the U.S. when she was sixteen. She went on to work 70-hour weeks in Oregon’s strawberry fields and plywood plants before putting herself through school to work as a nurse in Klamath Falls. “She wasn't given anything. Still, she’s served the longest out of anybody at her clinic,” Diaz adds.
Diaz is working to turn his proposal into a startup by consulting stakeholders and mentors, recruiting a Board of Directors, and launching work on a real-world prototype. Meanwhile, he’s a student poised to graduate in 2027. His advocacy work to make the American Dream a tangible reality has just begun.
