The seven-member First 5 California Commission selected a 16-year veteran of the California Department of Education, Camille Maben, as its executive director in November 2012.
Maben attended Dunsmuir High School (Class of ‘72) in Dunsmuir, California, before getting a bachelor of arts in communication from California State University, Sacramento. She was a consultant at the California State Assembly Education Committee before coming to the Department of Education.
At the department, Maben was strategic advisor to Superintendent Delaine Eastin from 1998 to 2003. She was senior advisor on No Child Left Behind in 2003 and 2004, then director of the School and District Accountability Division until June 2007. She was co-chair of the State Advisory Council on Early Learning and Care, and helped win and implement the $52.6 million federal Race-to-the-Top Early Learning Challenge Grant.
Maben was appointed chief of staff in the Office of the Secretary of Education before being appointed director of the department’s Child Development Division in March 2008. She oversaw a $1.7 billion budget and had oversight of more than 700 early care and education contractors.
Maben, a registered Democrat, has served on the Rocklin Unified School District Board of Trustees for 16 years. Some of her more extreme political opponents in the 2012 Rocklin school board race considered Maben an “extreme leftist” for her support of educational materials that speak positively about gay rights, point out that George Washington owned slaves and ascribe some political motivation to Abraham Lincoln’s emancipation proclamation.
Maben succeeded former Executive Director Kris Perry, who left in August 2012 to head the national First Five Years’ Fund. Chief Counsel Reneé Webster-Hawkins served as interim executive director until Maben’s appointment.
First 5 California Announces Camille Maben as New Executive Director (Press release) (pdf)
Camille Maben Named New CDD Director (Child Development Policy Institute)
People in the News (Central Valley Business Times)
