By Michael Williams

(CNN) — Erika Kirk has been named CEO of Turning Point USA, taking over the organization that her husband, Charlie Kirk, helped found and led until his assassination last week.

The move was announced by the organization’s board in a post on X. The post said Charlie Kirk had in prior discussions made known that “this is what he wanted in the event of his death.”

“We will not surrender or kneel before evil,” board members said in a statement. “We will carry on.”

Charlie Kirk co-founded Turning Point USA in 2012 and transformed it into one of the most influential conservative organizations that was credited with galvanizing youth toward Donald Trump’s MAGA movement.

In her first remarks since her husband’s assassination, Kirk said she was committed to continuing her husband’s work and his legacy.

“To everyone listening tonight across America, the movement my husband built will not die,” Kirk said in her Sept. 12 remarks.

“My husband’s mission will not end, not even for a moment,” she said, vowing to continue the American Comeback Tour of college campuses scheduled for this fall.

Born Erika Frantzve, Kirk, 36, was raised in Scottsdale, Arizona by her mother after her parents divorced when she was a child. She studied political science at Arizona State University and was briefly an NCAA basketball player. She won the Miss Arizona USA pageant in 2012.

The Kirks were engaged in 2020 and married the next year. They shared two young children.

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