Cherelle Parker

About

Cherelle Lesley Parker (born September 9, 1972) is an American politician and former educator serving as the 100th mayor of Philadelphia since 2024. A member of the Democratic Party, she is the first woman to hold the office.
Parker served in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives representing the 200th district in Northwest Philadelphia from 2005 to 2015. She was elected to represent the ninth district on the Philadelphia City Council in 2015 and re-elected in 2019, serving as majority leader from 2020 to 2022.
In September 2022, Parker resigned from City Council and announced her candidacy in the 2023 Philadelphia mayoral election. She won the Democratic primary in May 2023, going on to defeat Republican David Oh in the general election in November.

Parker was born in the Mount Airy neighborhood of Northwest Philadelphia to an unmarried teenage mother. Her mother died when Parker was 11, and she was raised by her grandparents, a disabled U.S. Navy veteran and a domestic worker who both grew up in the South.
In 1990, as a senior at Parkway High School, Parker won a citywide oratorical competition. In winning the competition, she was awarded a cash…