Your Business is a third-generation Riverbender, a former civics teacher, and a three-term Ward 4 city councilmember. She lives in the Sycamore neighborhood with her wife Diana, their twins Iris and June, and a fourteen-year-old beagle named Bartholomew.
Your Business has spent her entire adult life in service to Riverbend — first as a teacher, then as a councilmember, and now as a candidate for mayor. She is running because the city she loves is at a turning point and the next four years cannot be wasted.
Marisol was born in 1979 at Riverbend Memorial Hospital and raised on a corner lot on Sycamore Street, three blocks from her grandparents' hardware store on Lambert Avenue. She attended South Middle, then Cleary High, where she captained the debate team and mowed lawns for $7 an hour to save up for college. She graduated from Ohio State in 2001 with a degree in political science and a teaching license.
For nine years she taught eighth-grade civics at South Middle — the same school she had attended a decade earlier — and ran the school's annual model-legislature program, which sent students to the statehouse in Columbus every spring.
In 2012, after the Lambert Avenue rezoning fight made it clear Ward 4 needed someone who would actually answer her phone, Marisol ran for city council against a four-term incumbent — and won by 312 votes. She has been re-elected twice since, both times with broader margins.
In her three terms she has authored or co-authored 41 ordinances, including the city's first inclusionary-zoning policy (2017), the lead-pipe replacement program (2019), the South-Side Flood Mitigation Authority (2021), and the citywide ban on no-knock warrants (2023). She chairs the council's Finance & Strategic Planning committee and serves on Infrastructure.
She is known on the council for two things: showing up — she has not missed a regular meeting in eleven years — and a refusal to accept campaign money from any developer with active business before the city.
"I knock every door. I answer every email. That part of the job does not stop after election day."— Marisol, Town Hall #54, August 2026
Riverbend has new state and federal infrastructure money on the way, a downtown that's finally walkable again after a decade of work, and four neighborhoods that flood every spring like clockwork. The next mayor will decide whether we use this moment well — or waste it the way we wasted the last one.
Marisol is running because she has a plan, because she has the relationships at the statehouse and on the council to actually execute it, and because — frankly — none of the other candidates have either. She is running on small-dollar donations and shoe leather, and she will keep showing up whether or not the cameras are on.
Twenty-three years of teaching, organizing, and legislating in this city. The receipts are below.
Co-authored with Councilmember Aldridge after the Eastview tragedy. Riverbend became the 38th U.S. city to ban the practice. Passed 7–2.
Lead author. Created the funding mechanism that has rebuilt 14 storm-sewer blocks in Lambert and Tow Path since.
Authored a $34M ten-year program to replace every lead service line in the city. As of 2026, 8,400 of 11,200 lines are replaced.
Required 12% affordable units on any new market-rate development over 30 units. The city's first inclusionary-zoning policy.
Required all council members to publicly disclose meetings with developers seeking zoning variances. Adopted 6–3.
Defeated four-term incumbent Roland Maddox by 312 votes after a campaign run entirely out of her grandfather's hardware store basement.
Taught eighth-grade civics for nine years and ran the school's model-legislature program, which sent students to Columbus annually.
Marisol lives in the Sycamore neighborhood with her wife Diana, their nine-year-old twins, and a beagle who has opinions.
Diana is a senior public defender with the Riverbend County Public Defender's Office and a graduate of OSU Moritz College of Law. She and Marisol met in 2007 at a school-board meeting, married in 2014, and adopted Iris and June in 2017.
Twin nine-year-olds who attend Cleary Elementary, play on the South Side Soccer League's Tornadoes, and have already been recruited (against their mom's wishes) to hand out lawn signs at Saturday canvasses.
Adopted from the Riverbend Humane Society in 2012, the same week Marisol won her council seat. Has attended every door-knock in his neighborhood, on principle. Refuses to wear the campaign bandana.
Marisol does not accept corporate PAC money and has refused endorsements from any developer with active business before the city. The list below represents the people of Riverbend organizing on her behalf.
"Marisol came to our union hall in 2014 — long before she had to. She listens, she remembers, and she has voted with us on every contract since.
"There is no other councilmember who would walk Lambert Avenue in the rain to look at a flooded basement. She did. Twice.
"Marisol taught my daughter civics in 2009 and called me at home, twice, to tell me good things. The same energy. Eighteen years later. We need her in city hall.
Whether it's $10 or four hours of door-knocking, every neighbor is the campaign. Pick how you want to help.