Dustin Parker: Entrepreneur. Writer. Student.

I was out celebrating when it happened. Nine generations of Delaware history, letters, photographs, the tangible inheritance of a family rooted in this land before there was a nation, gone in a few hours. We rebuilt. That's what you do. But something shifted that night. I learned young that the things we assume are permanent rarely are, and that everything worth having must be rebuilt, sometimes more than once.

In high school, I weighed 315 pounds. Four months after graduation, I'd lost nearly 150. Not through a program or a pill. Through discipline. Through deciding to become someone different. Change is possible. It's nonlinear. You can rebuild yourself from first principles if you're willing to do the work.

Politics

At twenty-two, I managed a statewide political campaign that made history.

We were underdogs, outspent in the general, facing an incumbent. We won by over six thousand votes and carried every county. The candidate we elected became the first African-American to hold statewide office in Delaware's history. Before that campaign, I was a field organizer for what analysts called the most competitive gubernatorial race in the nation, managing more than 150 volunteers across Sussex County. I interned for a U.S. Senator. I learned how movements form, how disparate people find common cause, how small decisions compound into outcomes no one predicted.

Then I walked away entirely.

Teaching

Rachel and I met on those campaigns. We both wanted something different, a way to help people that didn't require the relentless pace of political life. So we went back to school, earned graduate degrees in education, and became teachers.

I taught special education and social studies across several schools in Delaware. I started at an alternative school, working with kids who'd been expelled, students most people had given up on. I understood something about being counted out. I knew what it felt like to transform when nobody expected you to. My students posted some of the highest test scores in state history. Five years in the classroom taught me to simplify without dumbing down, to meet people exactly where they are, and to design systems that help people become more than they believed possible.

Building

By 2015, I was supplementing teaching with a real estate license I'd gotten on the side. What started as extra income became something else entirely.

Rachel and I founded The Parker Group in 2016. Today it's one of the top boutique brokerages in the mid-Atlantic, about 65 agents and staff across three Delaware locations. We created the Cosmic Agent program (salaried agents with full benefits) before anyone else in our market was talking about it. Our agents have won Rookie of the Year back-to-back. Our GiveLocal fund donates nearly $100,000 annually to organizations like Habitat for Humanity, Make-A-Wish Foundation, and Boys and Girls Club. In a market of more than 4,000 agents, we compete by doing things differently.

Rachel and I co-founded four more companies alongside the brokerage: property management, mortgage, insurance, title. Vertical integration. When nobody owns the whole experience, friction compounds at every handoff. We wanted to own the handoffs.

Nine generations. My family has been in Delaware since before there was a United States. I lost my childhood home to fire at thirteen, but the roots remained. I'm not parachuting in with solutions. I'm building for the people I grew up with, in the place I've always called home, even when home had to be rebuilt.

Archie

That frustration with how the industry works led to Archie, the proptech company I founded in 2024 with Rachel and our CTO Marius Kirschke.

We're solving inefficiencies that have plagued real estate for generations: the waiting, the uncertainty, the misaligned incentives. We only make money when sellers get great outcomes. We raised our initial funding successfully (though I'll admit I much prefer bootstrapping) and we've completed transactions in Delaware and Maryland, with expansion planned.

Governor Matt Meyer called Archie "genius technology that's going to relieve pressure on families across our community, across our state, and maybe even across our country." Lieutenant Governor Kyle Evans Gay described it as "a true homegrown effort to pair technology with meeting some of our greatest needs in the housing area." We won Delaware's EDGE grant for STEM innovation, $100,000 plus a state matching pledge. The University of Delaware's Horn Entrepreneurship program gave us an Innovation Award.

Writing

Somewhere in the middle of building companies, I started writing.

Not content marketing. Actual writing. Essays about innovation and industry, about the tension between tradition and disruption, about how people and institutions change. Over a few years, I wrote more than 200,000 words.

In January 2026, I won an international writing award from Information Architects in Tokyo, the company behind iA Writer, one of the most respected writing tools in the world. I was invited to Renaissance Weekend, the invitation-only gathering founded in 1981 where Nobel laureates, Supreme Court justices, and presidents have exchanged ideas for over four decades. I attended in Monterey and again in Charleston, speaking and moderating both times.

I've been lucky. Through these gatherings, and through the simple act of putting myself out there over many years, I've had the chance to meet and learn from remarkable people: presidents, Nobel laureates, physicists, technologists, billionaires, musicians, philosophers. People who've built things that matter. These experiences felt like signals. Not that I'd arrived anywhere, but that the synthesis, connecting patterns across politics, education, business, and technology, was something worth pursuing more deliberately.

Dot by Dot

Dot by Dot is the next chapter.

It's a continuation of my writing alongside a podcast about transformation. The decisions that shape us. The moments we only recognize in hindsight. The patterns connecting wildly different lives. The writing is actually more central than the conversations, though both matter.

I'm not interested in success stories polished for the keynote stage. I want the real texture of change: the seasons of loss, depression, and doubt that nobody mentions in the highlight reel. The mistakes that taught more than the wins. I ask about these things because I've lived them. The path from 315-pound teenager to whatever I am now wasn't linear. There were seasons of building and seasons of losing. The house that burned down. The times I got it wrong and had to start again.

The name comes from a conviction: nobody's life makes sense in real time. The dots only connect looking backward. I want to have conversations with people who have lived in interesting ways. Not just accomplished things, but transformed through them.

Selected Recognition

Thought Leadership

• iA Awards Writing Winner, 2026
  Information Architects, Tokyo
• Renaissance Weekend
  Speaker & Moderator, Monterey & Charleston
• Day One Fellowship
  NYC, 2022–2023
• NAR 30 Under 30 Semi-Finalist
• 40 Under 40, Delaware

Business & Innovation

• The Parker Group
  $1B+ total transactions
• Delaware EDGE Grant, STEM Winner
  $100K + state matching pledge
• UD Horn Innovation Award
• Governor & Lt. Governor Endorsement
• America's Best Real Estate Professionals
  RealTrends + Tom Ferry

Community

• Good Neighbor Award
  Delaware Association of Realtors
• GiveLocal Fund
  ~$100K donated annually
• Best of Sussex County
  Coastal Style, Metropolitan — multiple years
• SCAOR Rookie of the Year
  Team members, back-to-back years

Education

• M.A. Secondary Education
  Wilmington University, 2012
• B.A. International Relations
  University of Delaware, 2011
• GW Executive Communications
• Teaching Credentials
  Special Ed & Social Studies, Delaware

The Arc

I live in Delaware with my wife Rachel, my partner for eighteen years, and our children Avery (10) and Ford (6). Rachel and I met on political campaigns, taught together, built companies together. None of this would exist without her.

My closest family and friends, my colleagues who show up every day to build something meaningful: these relationships make the work matter. I learned that the hard way, through seasons when I prioritized wrong. Building alone is hollow. Building with people you love, for a community you belong to, that's the point.

I train at CrossFit before dawn. I read philosophy: Jung, Nietzsche, Frankl, Adler. The discipline I learned losing 150 pounds never left; it just found new applications. I'm exploring stand-up comedy, improv, and performance lately, because why not. I love design, great writing, great film, great music, great comedy, the art and beauty of it all. I try to do the right thing, even when it's hard, and not always very well.

I believe the most important conversations happen when people bring their full, strange, contradictory selves to the table. That's what I'm trying to create.

Want to be a guest on Dot by Dot? I'm looking for people who have lived in interesting ways. Not just accomplished things, but transformed through them.

Reach out and tell me your story.