Staff

 
 
 

Margarita Florez Vasconcelos
Interim Executive Director

Born in Mexico City, Margarita Florez Vasconcelos immigrated with her family to San Francisco in the early 1980s. Her parents enrolled in adult school to learn and improve their English and met friends they later helped to secure jobs and navigate things like school, banking, and building businesses. She grew up firmly believing that as immigrants, we had to work together and lift each other up as we climbed.

A builder, Margarita has helped various organizations grow and scale their operations and impact. Most recently, she was the managing director at the Crankstart Foundation, where she built their strategic grantmaking approach and program team from the ground up. She recruited top leaders in respective fields and leveraged local and national networks to swiftly deploy $400m to communities in two years. 

Ms. Florez Vasconcelos has spent nearly 25 years in education as a teacher, principal, district leader, non-profit leader, and funder. She lives in Oakland and is raising her son in a bilingual, multi-generational home alongside her partner, who also started his career as a public school teacher.