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Maribel Gonzalez is the Co-founder and CEO of the Contra Costa County Charter Coalition (5C) where she leads a coalition of public charter schools and partner organizations serving 12,000+ students in Contra Costa County, CA. Previously, she was the Executive Director at GO Public Schools. Prior to this, Maribel was the Director of Community Partnerships and Policy at Educate78. In this role she lead the organization's strategy, grantmaking and policy initiatives to improve Oakland public schools through greater community and family engagement. She has also worked at Students for Education Reform (SFER) and Kids Coalition organizing students and families. Previously, she was the Program Manager at the Chamberlin Family Foundation where she led the advocacy and community engagement work for the foundation. Maribel began her career in education as a public school teacher in the Bronx, New York teaching fifth and sixth grade bilingual for recent arrival children from Latin America. Maribel's foray into community organizing began at Parent Revolution where she helped low-income parents organize to implement California's Parent Trigger law in addition to other school turnaround campaigns. Her commitment to transforming failing schools is rooted in the academic inequities and abysmal conditions she experienced while attending Locke High School in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. This experience sparked her unyielding dedication to individual and community empowerment. Maribel obtained her bachelor's degree from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), a master's degree in Education from Pace University, and her juris doctorate at the UCLA School of Law. In law school, she was a clinical intern at the Learning Rights Law Center and participated in the David J. Epstein Program in Public Interest Law and Policy.
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