Christian Diaz is Director of Equitable Housing & Land Use at Palenque LSNA, a community organization that has been developing leaders and advancing racial equity in Chicago for 62 years. Previously, he served as Executive Director of Chicago Votes, where he designed models of civic innovation with young people in Chicago Public Schools and the City Colleges of Chicago and helped steer a coalition to pass automatic voter registration in Illinois. Born in Mexico, Diaz identifies as queer, Latino, and immigrant. He brings 10+ years of experience in nonprofit management, community engagement, and racial equity advocacy, having worked in coalitions to win driver’s licenses for undocumented residents, require data transparency on student arrests in publicly-funded schools, and ban 10-day suspensions of high school students in Illinois. Diaz graduated with a B.A. in Global Studies at Warren Wilson College. In earlier lives, Diaz volunteered at a home for children with disabilities in northern India; worked at a wolf sanctuary in rural New Mexico; and taught English at a monastery in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.