Overview: Christal Parker, a nurse practitioner, owns Savvy Beauty and Wellness Lounge in Rancho Cucamonga, California, where she provides hormone therapy and IV hydration therapy to her patients. Parker’s journey began with her own hormone imbalance, which she discovered and treated with hormone therapy. She now uses her experience to help other women, particularly Black women, who often face barriers in the healthcare system. Parker emphasizes the importance of community and representation in healthcare, and encourages women to take the first step towards starting their own businesses.
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Aryana Noroozi
For Christal Parker, MSN, FNP-C, the most rewarding part of owning her own business, Savvy Beauty and Wellness Lounge, is seeing how her patients’ lives have changed and how they have found answers to their problems together.
Parker remembers her own experience when she was postpartum and working full time as a nurse in the emergency room. She experienced fatigue and brain fog, among other symptoms of what—she did not know at the time—was a hormone imbalance.
Around the same time, she attended a medical conference, where she met her mentor.
“I went to her because she was the only Black speaker there,” Parker said. Attending this session soon extended far beyond just a show of support – it was a pivotal moment for not only Parker’s own health, but for a shift in the direction of her career as a health provider. She began hormone therapy herself.
“I started feeling balanced again, so I brought that back to my practice… I think because I was so passionate about it because it helped me,” Parker said. “I completely turned my practice around the last two years, to just focus on hormone therapy and weight loss.”
She said she is inspired by seeing how other women’s lives can change.
“I’m able to scream to the roof, talk about it and tell more people,” she said.
In her practice, Parker works to debunk misinformation around hormone therapy and provide various modules to the treatment including patches, pills, pellets, injections and cremes.
“I wanted to learn every type of option because there is not one size that fits all for all women,” she explained. She also provides intravenous (IV) hydration therapy.
Since 2022, Savvy Beauty and Wellness Lounge has existed as a wellness clinic where Parker not only provides hormone therapy, but there is also an in-house esthetician and a separate space where the two host a podcast discussing being female entrepreneurs in the wellness and healthcare field.
Parker, who was hesitant to post on social media and join the digital world to promote her business, now emphasizes the importance of utilizing it as a means of connecting and finding solutions.
“Women are at their wit’s end now… and demanding answers,” Parker said as she explained how many are demanding answers and using social media as a source of information to see what treatment options are possible.
Parker touched on an additional barrier Black women encounter when it comes to health in general: not being heard.
“I schedule an hour to really be able to listen and hear [my patients’] story,” Parker said. She noted that in the traditional healthcare field, where she also provides weight loss care, she is only given a fraction of that time.
“Being able to give them that space with someone who looks like them, and someone who studies and researches this, [helps] Black women be able to trust more.”
Parker reflected on her journey recognizing it as a“full circle moment,” sparked by representation and trust. She met her mentor because she saw herself – a Black female – represented. She now speaks about hormone therapy at that very same conference where she met her mentor.
When it comes to advice, Parker urges other women of color who are considering starting a business to just do it.
“You just have to step out on faith and just do it,” she said. Parker added that her own experience, along with coaching others, has shown her the success of taking this leap.
“So many opportunities come your way that you wouldn’t have even thought of or wouldn’t have even been privy to or known about if you didn’t start… a lot of times as Black women, we’ve been told, ‘keep things to yourself until you’re ready to pop out.’ But that doesn’t really work all the time, because you need other people’s help, and you never know who can help you,” Parker said. She emphasized the importance of community and community building in her own practice.
“It’s important to verbalize your dreams and talk about them and just get started in the slowest way possible,” Park encouraged. “I’m not saying quit your job and just start a business, but definitely make the steps to do what you have to do while you’re still working… it starts taking a shape of its own, a life of its own, and then [let] that propel you.”
This article is part of the 2025 Black Voice News Series, Good Black Jobs: Advancing Meaningful Work and Wealth in the Inland Empire. This reporting initiative is funded through a grant provided by Thrive Inland SoCal Catalyst Fund in partnership with the Inland Empire Community Foundation.