Meet the Mayors creating opportunity and prosperity in America’s cities.
Nine in 10 Americans live in metropolitan areas. These cities offer great opportunities, but they they also face grand challenges. Throughout Texas and the rest of the country, our cities require fresh ideas, innovative partnerships, and feasible and affordable policies to address growing challenges. Meet the Mayors series at the LBJ School brings together the Mayors building the cities of the future.
Mattie Parker was elected in June 2021 as the youngest mayor of any major US city and the 45th Mayor of Fort Worth, one of the fastest growing cities in the country and the most politically conservative big city in Texas. Parker, 38, is the city’s first millennial mayor, and she presides over the youngest and most diverse city council in Fort Worth history. In her first year, she has led the city through a host of urban challenges from public safety to public health to affordability. She’s been known to make appeals for bipartisanship, even when it means she has to buck her party. “It’s go time” with Mayor Mattie Parker.
Speaker
Mattie Parker was elected in June 2021 as the 45th Mayor of Fort Worth. Leading one of the fastest growing large cities in the nation, Parker has set her focus on key issues that move Fort Worth forward including economic development growth, innovative transportation and mobility solutions, quality education opportunities for every student, and building safer, more prosperous communities.
Parker is a licensed attorney, with more than seventeen years of experience in national, state and local public affairs, including her service as the chief of staff for Mayor and the Fort Worth City Council where she helped shape major policy decisions on a variety of complex issues. She was the founding CEO of Fort Worth Cradle to Career and the Tarrant To & Through (T3) Partnership.
Originally from Hico, Texas, Parker graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a Bachelor of Arts in government and has a law degree from Texas A&M University School of Law where she was awarded the prestigious MacLean & Boulware Endowed Law Scholarship.
She and her husband, David, are raising their family, one daughter and two young sons, in Fort Worth.