Diego Ontaneda Benavides is the Co-Founder and President of Latin American Leadership Academy (LALA), a social enterprise dedicated to promoting sustainable economic development and strengthening democratic governance in Latin America by developing a new generation of leaders. Diego’s journey took him from McKinsey & Company in San Francisco to African Leadership Academy (ALA) in Johannesburg, where he saw firsthand the vast potential in empowering the region’s most promising youth to become the next generation of changemakers.
Inspired by this experience, Diego co-founded LALA with David Baptista in 2018. Since then, LALA has built a world-class product (NPS +95), reached 3000+ young leaders from 20 countries (most of them from historically underrepresented backgrounds), and started a movement of purpose-driven leaders. LALA's young leaders have already launched more than 500 social impact ventures impacting hundreds of thousands in their communities, and are entering the best universities in Latin America and the world with millions of dollars in need-based aid. LALA is now entering a new phase of institutional strength and scale, both decentralizing and localizing elements of its model through country-level Hubs united under a global umbrella network. LALA's work and innovations have been recognized in top local and global publications, including a feature in "Frontiers in Social Innovation: The Essential Handbook for Creating, Deploying, and Sustaining Creative Solutions to Systemic Problems" (Harvard Business Review, 2022).
Diego graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a BA in Political Economy from Williams College and holds an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business. He is a 2018 Echoing Green Global Fellow and a 2025 WEF Young Global Leader. Diego is originally from Lima, Peru, and is now living in São Paulo, Brazil.