Star Parker

In 2018, she was appointed by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to the U.S. Frederick Douglass Bicentennial Commission.

In 2017, Star Parker joined the White House Center for Faith and Opportunity Initiatives advisory team to share ideas on which policies would improve the nation's most distressed zip codes.

In March 2010, Parker announced her candidacy for Congress in California's 37th District, which encompasses most of Long Beach and Compton, as well as Carson, Signal Hill, and parts of other municipalities. She lost the November 2 general election to Democrat Laura Richardson, earning 22.7 percent of the vote.

Star Parker is an American syndicated columnist, Republican politician, author, and conservative political activist. In 1995, she founded the Center for Urban Renewal and Education (CURE). In 2010, she was the unsuccessful Republican nominee for the United States House of Representatives in California's 37th District.

Parker was born Larstella Irby in Moses Lake, Washington; she was raised in a nonreligious home by often-absent parents. She lived in Japan for three years and returned to the U.S., moving to East St. Louis, Illinois, at twelve. She said that after one arrest for shoplifting, her white high school guidance counselor told her "not to worry about it, because I was a 'victim of racism, lashing out at society.'" After attending church at the behest of her friends, Parker became a Christian and reformed her life. She enrolled in Woodbury University, graduating with a degree in marketing. She began advocating for conservative social and political causes, and founded CURE in 1995. After she was laid off from her job as a program host on Los Angeles radio station KABC (after the outlet was purchased by Disney), Parker devoted her efforts to CURE full-time.

In 1995, Parker founded the Coalition on Urban Renewal and Education, and later changed its name to the Center for Urban Renewal and Education (CURE). Located in Washington, D.C., CURE is a policy-oriented and politically conservative think-tank; Parker serves as its president.