Former City Commissioner Carmen Rubio Named Executive Director at Youth Nonprofit

Former city commissioner and onetime mayoral hopeful Carmen Rubio is the new executive director of Janus Youth Programs, a nonprofit that serves at-risk children and teenagers in Oregon and Southwest Washington.

Rubio assumes the role Aug. 1, according to a statement by Janus. The nonprofit runs 20 programs for at-risk youth, and its latest tax filing shows it has annual revenues of $15 million and employs 250 people.

Rubio served one term on the Portland City Council, from 2020 to 2024, and ran for mayor last fall. She was seen in the early days of the contest as one of two front-runners in the race, alongside former City Commissioner Rene Gonzalez. But reporting by The Oregonian showed that Rubio had years’ worth of unpaid parking tickets and traffic citations. It tanked Rubio’s mayoral campaign.

Both Rubio and Gonzalez were bogged down by personal missteps and lost to now-Mayor Keith Wilson in the city’s first-ever ranked-choice election.

Gonzalez took a job earlier this year as an in-house attorney for Jubitz, the local truck stop company.

Rubio is returning to the world that she came from: the nonprofit sector. Prior to her election to the City Council in 2020, Rubio served as the executive director of the Latino Network, a major nonprofit in town.