Chelsea Parke: D3 Field Hockey Star Turned Fashion CEO

Parke, Dickinson & D3 Balance

For Goles, D3 athletics required a leap of faith, considered Navy before visiting Carlisle, where future teammate Palmer Murray, a fellow Baltimore native and Dickinson lacrosse goalkeeper from one of the area’s premier high school lacrosse programs, offered a different perspective, offered a different perspective.

Goles recalled Murray telling him that if he could move past the idea that Division I lacrosse was inherently superior, Dickinson would demand as much of him academically as it would athletically. That notion immediately took hold in ways Goles couldn’t have anticipated.

The liberal arts route gave him and Parke room to pursue interests outside their respective sports, including an unexpected Italian connection. Goles minored in it, while Parke spent spring 2018 studying in Florence through Dickinson’s partnership with Syracuse University, a possibility afforded by D3 student-athlete flexibility.

Goles would wake at dawn to talk with her as she went about her day, with Parke staying up late to watch his lacrosse matchups across the Centennial Conference. Looking back, he sees those opportunities as part of what separates Dickinson from the pack, helping shape the broad perspective he’s carried into a career that’s shifted from traditional finance to real estate and beyond.

I don’t think I would’ve gone down that [career] path without going to a liberal arts college. It made me look at things through multiple lenses and hear far, far different perspectives on many of the same topics. That really helps me in life, especially in business.

Their commitment to Red Devils athletics also provided plenty of memorable moments.

Parke finished her field hockey career as a senior captain with 99 points (43 goals, 13 assists), the second-highest total in program history. Goles was building his own Dickinson legacy on the lacrosse field. During his sophomore season, the Red Devils won the Centennial Conference championship, and his overtime goal against rival Washington and Lee in the NCAA Third Round sent them to the Elite Eight.

When he looks back on the Red Devils’ tournament success that season, the goal itself is hardly the whole story.

“That team that year just had something really, really special,” Goles said. “I think probably one of the best experiences is sort of like a culmination of moments, like on the practice field and team bonding, different things that led to that moment. If you’re thinking about how or why that team was so good, it was really the things off the field … that happened because it was a D3 school.”

Building Parke — Together

Parke began with a Saturday trip to a farmers’ market in Miami. She and her mother, Liz Kramer, met a vintage denim vendor, bought several pairs of Levi’s and eventually traveled to Los Angeles to source vintage men’s jeans to be reworked into women’s styles. They launched roughly 200 pairs in July 2022, but vintage denim’s inconsistencies made scaling difficult.

After graduating from Dickinson with an art history degree, Parke started looking for something more uniform, making a mockneck sweatshirt almost on a whim and posting a photo of it to Instagram. The response was immediate, and the interest was palpable.

When the first run arrived nearly a year later, it sold out within an hour. That’s when Parke realized she had landed on her brand’s signature product. Mockneck drops soon became highly sought after, fueling a following that helped PARKE expand well beyond its denim roots.

Chell has always stayed exactly true to who she is. So the whole company is based around basically, well, what would I wear? And what do I like wearing? And that’s what she’s built it [PARKE] on. The sweatshirts, the jeans, the core basics, T-shirts, and hats and things like that. And she’s never really deviated.

Goles’ career trajectory was less direct. He moved through wealth management and credit analysis before relocating to Miami and entering real estate development, where he worked on projects including Santander’s Brickell headquarters. As PARKE grew, though, his two worlds increasingly overlapped.

He initially helped Parke while continuing his real estate career. By early 2025, he was effectively balancing two jobs. The demands of both became impossible to ignore.

“It got to a point where we looked at each other and said, ‘This is a real, very legit business that somebody’s got to run,'” Goles said.

He made the leap that summer, joining PARKE as president and CFO just months before marrying its founder and CEO. His role spans marketing and product strategy, shipments and warehouse operations, pop-up events and long-term planning as the company has grown to roughly 20 full-time employees.

Diego Ojeda, Goles’ mentor in real estate development, once compared his role to that of a train conductor, keeping designers, finance teams and everyone else moving toward the same destination. But he’s learned a distinct lesson from Parke: the value of staying true to yourself.

She’s built PARKE around her personal style, growing the brand into a multimillion-dollar business.

For Webster, the connection between Dickinson and what came next is clear. The challenges they faced as student-athletes helped prepare them for the opportunities and demands that followed.

“I think the success that Nick and Chelsea have had is a real testament to what a liberal arts education can provide,” said Dave Webster, Dickinson’s associate athletic director and men’s lacrosse head coach since 2001. “The critical thinking, becoming a global citizen and leader, being able to connect the dots — all those things are really important.”

The college recently brought their story full circle by partnering to release a limited-edition PARKE x Dickinson Outfitters Varsity Crew at the campus store Sept. 4. The first drop sold out that day, prompting Dickinson to open preorders for a second shipment.

What once brought two Division III student-athletes together in a classroom has taken on a different form, with PARKE dressing the campus she and her husband still call home.