Ben Parra Named President of Rensen House of Lights in Kansas City

Lighting veteran Benjamin Parra has been named President of Rensen House of Lights in Lenexa, Kansas, effective August 2024. For the past 12 years, Parra served as Sales Manager for Lights Fantastic in the Dallas area. Prior to that position, he was Regional Manager for Lee Lighting’s three showrooms and distribution center in northern Texas.

When Parra was growing up in Kansas, his mother Becky worked for the Rensenhouse family’s electrical supply business in the 1970s before joining Tom Rensenhouse as he launched the company’s first lighting showroom, Rensen House of Lights. (His mother later operated the Lyteworks showroom in Bradenton, Florida.)

After college, Ben joined the Rensen House of Lights staff in Kansas and remained an integral part of the team for eight years before moving to Dallas, where he landed the managerial role at Lights Fantastic.

“I’m back where I started,” jokes Parra, who has kept in contact with Tom Rensenhouse over the years. It was during a recent visit to the Kansas City area while helping his daughter move back to her college campus that Rensenhouse and Parra were able to meet up and the topic of succession planning arose. “Tom thought that I could take his business to the next level,” Parra recalls. The idea held great appeal, even though it meant relocating his family from Dallas, which was close to his relatives, including his mother.

Parra is excited to take the reins at the showroom where his lighting career began, noting that he has a lot of respect for the business that Rensenhouse built and is determined to move the showroom forward into a new era.