I am just an average Joe,” says 32-year-old Joe Horiye, president of the San Diego Community Housing Corp., a nonprofit organization that provides affordable housing and community development services in low- and moderate-income neighborhoods.

The first in his family to graduate from college, the San Diego native was in the pilot class of Hal Brown’s Community Economic Development program at San Diego State University. Horiye, a Madison High School graduate, also has been certified in San Diego’s Leadership Education Awareness Development and Local Initiatives Support Corp.’s California Statewide Affordable Housing and Community Development Training Program.

Not shy about organizations with long names, Horiye also served as an aide to Rep. Norman Y. Mineta, the former chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, before returning to his hometown.

Earlier, he had worked for the San Diego Regional Chamber. As an SDSU alum, Horiye also holds the distinction of serving as his university’s first Asian American student body president in the school’s 100-plus year history.

Horiye’s community involvement includes — but is not limited to — being a past president and founding member of AVID Alumni Association (an educational program focusing on getting teens into college) and a past board president for both the Asian Business Association and the Japanese American Citizens League. But much of his community involvement centers around San Diego’s Reinvestment Task Force and the Fair Housing Council of San Diego.

“To make real change in neighborhoods,” Horiye says, takes more than “just sticks and bricks.” With all his experience, he knows that is true.

— Alexis Pasqua