Marti Diaz

Marti Diaz is a public school administrator with a unique background and an uncompromising devotion to underprivileged youths. Her specialties include bilingual education, parent empowerment, curriculum development and other issues related to underserved and immigrant youth.

Ms. Diaz currently serves as the principal of Kelly School in Portland, Oregon. She has spent more than a decade with the Portland Public Schools system, the bulk of that time devoted to underserved and non-native-English-speaking students.. Her current student population includes a large population of Hispanic immigrant youths, many of whom speak Spanish at home, and a substantial cluster of Russian refugees.

Ms. Diaz has devoted the bulk of her career to the Portland Public Schools system. Prior to coming onboard at Kelly, she served as Assistant Principal at Vestal K-8 School, another high-performing school with a substantial population of students who speak a language other than English at home. At Vestal, her responsibilities included overseeing the school’s teacher evaluation framework, developing curriculum, networking with local parents and creating all master schedules for teaching staff.

Previously, Ms. Diaz served as summer school principal and Immersion Coordinator at Cesar Chavez K-8 School, where she pioneered a bilingual curriculum that saw 90 percent of students meet or exceed required benchmarks. Ms. Diaz also served as the point person for teacher training in bilingual education, language immersion and related topics.

As the daughter of Cuban immigrants, Ms. Diaz spent more than a decade of her life under Communist rule on the Caribbean island. After a jarring move to the United States, she resolved to become an educator and devote her career to helping students with similar life stories to her own. She credits her tight-knit expatriate community and strong educational pedigree with getting her to this point in her life and career.

“I am a living example of what can happen when a teacher believes in you,” she often says.

Ms. Diaz earned a bachelor’s degree from New Jersey’s Montclair State University, in New Jersey. She subsequently obtained a teaching master’s from Portland State University. In addition to helping children realize their full potential, she enjoys running, cyc