Maribel Gonzalez is the Co-founder and Executive Director of 5C that collectively serves more than 12,000 students, to ensure that families in Contra Costa County continue to be able to choose, attend, and improve high quality schools. Maribel is a former teacher, lawyer and education advocate with 15 years of community organizing experience. In 2022 she led a citywide, cross-sector coalition and grassroots electoral campaign to successfully pass Measure S, a voting measure to allow immigrant parents to vote in Oakland school board elections regardless of naturalization status. She and her team were recognized by the PIE Network and received the Power to the People award for the successful passing of Measure S. Maribel has been a force-multiplier in every organization she has served, working to bring the right people together and empower organizations to collaborate in the service of families and low-income communities. At Educate78 and in the context of the COVID-19 crisis, she designed, funded and managed an initiative called The People's Literacy Fund, to address Oakland's persistent literacy crisis amongst children and adults.

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 worked at the Learning Rights Law Center and participated in the David J. Epstein Program in Public Interest Law and Policy.