Name: Melanie Guest-Parker
Occupation: Senior Vice President in Private Lending
Hometown: Washington, DC
Tell me a little bit about yourself. How long have you lived in DC?
I first moved to DC when I was eighteen years old when I went to school at GW. That was my first stint in DC and I left in 2004 for employment in Austin, TX. I came back in 2019. All in total, I’ve lived in DC for eleven years of my life. I’m very glad I moved back — moving back was a really intentional decision, because I missed DC so much. It has always felt like home, even when I was living far away.
Why did you decide to move to DC?
There are a lot of reasons that people choose to live in the places that they do. For me, the things that are most important about livability are things like walkability, community — that’s really important — having a distinct sense of place and culture, general vibes are important too.
I’ve lived in Texas quite a bit and I can only compare my experience as being a native Texan and living in Texas to DC. For me, DC has always been more of a culture fit — it’s more welcoming to different types of people. You don’t have to live the exact same life as everybody else to be accepted here. Our strength comes from our diversity, which I really appreciate. The rights that we extend to all human beings, including women — things related to their reproductive rights, that’s also really important for me and one of the reasons I wanted to move back. We think about America as being multicultural and in DC, I think we do represent the best of that facet of America where you will find a lot of different ways to embrace life and embrace our differences. That was really important for me.
Getting back to the walkability thing, I just like the ability to be able to walk down the street and get everything I need — you can’t do that in most parts of Texas. Being able to go somewhere and get what you need and be active in that way is something that I really appreciate about living here in an East Coast city with remarkable transportation and remarkable availability of different things. I know that's not always the case for everyone in Washington, but that has been my experience.
What do you love most about living in DC?
The people. Regardless of who you’re talking to, everybody is interested in making the community and our world a better place. You run into so many people who are genuinely interested in taking care of one another and taking care of our world. Obviously, DC attracts a lot of ambitious people that are looking to make change and improve things where possible, and that energy is so palpable. You’re going to run into a lot of people who are almost delusionally positive — and I mean that in the best way.
We’ve run up against a lot of barriers to making positive change possible, but we just keep going. One of those barriers is around statehood, especially with how things are right now in our political climate. Things like statehood and DC autonomy feel further away than ever, but ironically, it’s been really energizing for a lot of people. Instead of being like ‘well now it’s even further away, so let’s just not even worry about it,’ more people have been energized to try and make that change possible.
Could you talk about your own experience being disenfranchised, or in other words, what it has been like to lose the rights you had when you were living in one of the 50 states?
We have Senator Jain and we have our representative, but neither one of them holds the type of power that states’ representatives and senators do, so when something happens, you feel kind of helpless. You can call them and they’ll definitely listen to you and respond to you, and they do what they can, but they can’t really do anything about it. It’s very unfortunate to say that out loud — it can lead to a sense of fatalism about even trying to contact them. It is really disheartening to not have that type of representation where you can feel really good because you reached out to your senator and you know that they’re going to take your voice into account when they take their votes on the floor.
There’s also additional legwork that you have to do as a Washingtonian, where you’re reaching out to all your friends that live in the DMV — in Virginia or Maryland — and asking them to contact [Sen.] Alsobrooks or [Sen.] Kaine and ask them to help us out. And of course, there’s reaching out to other friends and family members in other states. It’s like representation by proxy — you reach out to them and then they can reach out to other people. If you’re not careful, it can really plant the seed of fatalism, at least when it comes to representation. Right now in this political climate, it feels like it’s even further away — that sense of autonomy and statehood. Realizing that our ability to have Home Rule — the federal government can come in at any time and change or override the policies and legislation that we set forth for ourselves — it can feel really precarious, especially right now. It can create a sense of fear around whether or not the rights that you have today will be there tomorrow.
What does achieving statehood mean for you?
Beyond having somebody to call, the surety — it’s so funny, you just take it for granted if you live in a different state — you don’t realize how unstable you can feel without it. Just having that sense of surety that I am a citizen and I do have the exact same rights that have been afforded to every other citizen. If we were to have statehood, if we were to have complete autonomy — just not taking that for granted ever again.
What do you think needs to be done to get closer to achieving statehood?
Getting to statehood would involve going through a process and really getting other states onboard with giving us our statehood — that’s the key, and it’s going to require a lot of energy. And even if you do put forth all that energy, there’s no guarantee that it’ll be fruitful.
It comes down to having the right people make the right decisions. You can’t coerce people into agreeing with you. It goes back to having to contact folks in other states and ask them to reach out to their congresspeople — it’s the same process all over again. And of course, Congress changes constantly. Their dynamic is dynamic. I wish I had a better answer, but you just have to go through the typical process of statehood.
And, getting back to that sort of almost delusional optimism that we have, we have to continue to cultivate that as Washingtonians and not give up. That’s sort of the backbone of this process — it requires a lot of gumption on the part of the people that live in Washington.
Is there anything else you would like to say?
It feels ridiculous that we’re still having to deal with disenfranchisement. Conceptually, it’s so antithetical to the reason why this country was even founded, which is wanting representation in a really intentional way. Everyone knows that we pay our taxes — we pay a lot of “state” taxes — it’s hilarious to look at my W-2 [form] when it comes in and see that I’ve paid state taxes for a state that I don’t even have. I’m doing everything that I would do if I lived in a state and it just feels so silly to be having to advocate for this on the 250th anniversary of the founding of America.
In 2026, there are still millions of disenfranchised Americans — and that goes for DC, that goes for Puerto Rico, that goes for Guam, etc. It’s not just us, but there are so many other Americans who are dealing with disenfranchisement. I think if we were to have our statehood, it would also build more consensus around extending statehood to our territories. They also need statehood! The American experiment will never fully be realized until we extend statehood to every U.S. citizen. It’s that simple.
[this interview was conducted in February 2026]