Youth Commission

Diego Soto Lopez is a rising Senior at Deerfield Academy who aspires to become an aerospace engineer. In addition to his studies, he has taken an engineering course at San Diego Mesa College and has also served his community by providing feedback on transportation solutions for the 2021 SANDAG Regional Plan through the Urban Collaborative Project. He has also served on San Diego City's Youth Commission, where he was appointed by Mayor Todd Gloria. Deigo attended the APA National Planning Conference in 2022, speaking about his and his peers' efforts to help make his community a better place to live.  Diego also participated in a walk audit with Circulate San Diego to identify traffic calming measures on 47th Street, Diego noticed the need for a clean-up and organized the Scholars Clean-Up to ensure that his peers had safe paths to school. He enjoys finding ways to help both his peers and the community. 

City of San Diego Youth Commission - District 4 Appointee

"I am excited to appoint this group of smart, talented, and community-oriented young people to the City’s Youth Commission,” said Mayor Todd Gloria. “It’s been years since the Commission was active and I’m looking forward to the important recommendations the Commission will provide to the City to make sure we are appropriately supporting and serving young people.”  San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria - (October 2021)


In May of 2021 one of my friends Kevin, and I saw there was a challenge for people of our community to get a vaccination appointment, and COVID was hurting many families in our community.  We came up with an idea to have a pop-up vaccination event.  Eventually, we partnered up with San Diego City Councilmember Monica Montgomery's office in supporting and promoting an event at the Jacobs Center in our community, that allowed walkups with no appointment necessary.  The event was a huge success.  We are at the San Diego County Administration Building receiving an award from Supervisor Nora Vargas, San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria, and San Diego City Councilmember Monica Montgomery.