Erika Kirk, Charlie Kirk’s widow, is Turning Point USA’s new CEO : NPR
Erika and Charlie Kirk imagined at the Turnout Point USA Eve Ball in Washington, DC in January. After her death, she was elected new CEO of the organization.
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Erika Kirk – A denominational entrepreneur who advocated for women to prioritize the family during the career – will officially direct Turning Point USA, the organization of right -wing youth that her late husband Charlie Kirk created.
The group announced Thursday that its board of directors had elected it unanimously to be its CEO and its chairman of the board of directors, saying that Charlie had told several leaders that it was what he wanted to happen in the event of death.
“This is what Charlie hoped and wanted and he said if several times,” wrote the chief of the exploitation Tyler Bowyer on X. “Erika is one with Charlie and Charlie is one with Erika.”
Erika Kirk, 36, had recognized this possibility in the speech she delivered two days after her husband was shot in an event at a university in Utah on September 10.
In an address in tears, she undertook to continue the tour of the Turning Point campus, her annual conference of the Americafest and the radio program and the podcast ” [Charlie Kirk] was so proud. “”
“If you thought my husband’s mission was powerful before, you have no idea,” Kirk said. “You have no idea what you have just unleashed in all this country, and this world. You have no idea of the fire you have ignited in this woman. The cries of this widow resound in the world as a battle cry.”
Erika Kirk should also speak – with President Trump and vice -president Vance – during her late husband of husband on Sunday in Arizona, where the couple lived with their two young children.
Turning point USA, which Charlie Kirk founded in 2012, defends conservative activism in high schools and colleges. His website indicates that he has a national campus at national level.
The organization claims to have seen an increase in interest in the wake of the assassination of Kirk, tweeting on Thursday that it received more than 62,000 requests “from high school and colleges to start a chapter or get involved in an existing chapter” and hopes that Erika Kirk at the helm will still extend its scope.
“Charlie Kirk came and converted young men,” Tweety Bowyer. “Erika Kirk comes to convert young women.”
Erika – A former basketball player and queen of the competition that now directs a line of Christian clothing and a podcast of devotion – marries the traditional views of the genre and marriage, a bit like her husband. In public speeches and on her podcast, she encouraged the hierarchy of the family and called for the “rebirth of biblical femininity”.
Who is Erika Kirk?
Erika Kirk, née Frantzve, grew up in Scottsdale, Arizona, in a Catholic family, raised by her mother after her parents’ divorce.
After being crowned Miss Arizona USA in 2012, she described herself in an interview with local magazine as a “tomboy”, saying: “I did not wear my first pair of heels before I was 14 years old, but I had a really mean lay-up.”
Erika Kirk, then Miss Arizona USA Erika Frantzve, poses with other competition winners in New York in May 2012.
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Kirk played NCAA basketball for two years at Regis University in Denver. According to her website, she holds diplomas in political science and international relations of the Arizona State University as well as an American legal master’s degree from Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, where she is currently pursuing a doctorate in biblical studies.
Kirk’s biography describes her as a “motivated social entrepreneur, a passionate ministry chief and a deep woman of faith whose life has been shaped by her global experiences and her unwavering commitment to the goal”.
He said that she worked in the entertainment industry as a model, actress and casting director: “while remaining anchored in her Christian faith”. Recently, social media clips redone on the surface show its brief appearance in a 2019 episode of the TV show Bravo Summer houseFor which she later said that she had refused the possibility of being a member of the distribution in order to focus on her legal studies.
Kirk created a Biblein365 ministry program in 2016 and is also the host of the Devotion Podcast “Midweek Rise Up”. She also directs a line of Christian clothes called ProclM.
How did Erika and Charlie Kirk meet?
The couple’s first meeting in September 2018 began as a job interview.
They initially met during a brief meeting at the opening of the USA Turning Point headquarters in Phoenix, where she applied for a job. Shortly after, Charlie Kirk invited her to dine during a visit to New York, where she lived at the time. He chose a Burger restaurant, and they sat “in the depths of conversation and jokes on theology, philosophy and politics,” said Erika later.
After the death of her husband, she posted a video of telling her the story to their daughter as she sits on her lap in the same restaurant.
“I asked all these questions … philosophy, religion, Jesus,” explains Charlie Kirk. “And then I realized that mom was beautiful and intelligent and elegant and similar to Christ, so I said:” Forget this job interview, I want to go out with you. “”
The two got engaged in December 2020 and married in May 2021.
Erika Kirk gave birth to a girl in August 2022 and a son in May 2024. They shared extracts from their lives together in interviews and publications on social networks, keeping the names and faces of their private children.
The republicans of the house display a photo of the Kirk family during a commemorative event in the statuary room of the American Capitol on Monday.
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Kirk appeared to the events of Turning Point USA over the years, supporting her husband and making her own remarks.
Despite his own entrepreneurial activities, his advice to young women focused on prioritizing the house. At the youth summit in June, Kirk said “when I met Charlie, that was all – I cared about the career.”
She spoke of “submitting” to her husband, entitled “Boss Babe Culture … Antithetics in the Gospel” and encouraged women to be the “goalkeeper” of the house.
What is the future of USA turning point?
The activism of Charlie Kirk and the major social media were credited to have galvanized the conservative voters and helping Trump in victory in 2024. Erika Kirk declared after the death of her husband that the movement he built “will not die”.
“I refuse to let it happen. … We will all refuse it to happen,” she said. “My husband’s mission will not end, not even for a moment.”
She promised to continue the “American Comeback” tour of the organization’s fall campus. Her husband launched her first stop for the season when he was shot.
Kirk also urged people to register for his Americafest conference which was to take place in Phoenix in December. The talking programming, which has not been updated since the death of Charlie Kirk, includes Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon, Donald Trump Jr. and conservative activists like Riley Gaines and Jack Posobiet.
Erika Kirk also called young people inspired by her husband’s inheritance to join a USA Turning Point chapter on their own campus – or start theirs if there is none.
In his statement announcing the Kirk election to the CEO, the USA Board turning point declared that “Charlie has prepared us all like this” and promised to move forward.
“The attempt to destroy Charlie’s work will become our chance to make him more powerful and lasting than ever,” he added.
