Melissa “Dani” Altazin was born in Baton Rouge and graduated from Denham Springs High School in Livingston Parish. She earned her bachelor of science in Nutritional Sciences with a concentration in dietetics from LSU. She and her husband Ryan, a Baton Rouge native, are raising their three children, Hayden, Emma, and Kye, in East Baton Rouge public schools.

Dani's first experience with advocacy started with something personal. As a young woman she struggled with an eating disorder, and she knows what it costs a family when help is hard to find and harder to talk about. Rather than stay quiet about it, she organized Baton Rouge's first National Eating Disorders Association fundraising walk, bringing the community together and raising money for a cause almost nobody was discussing out loud at the time.

That is the pattern of her life. See a need, gather people, do the work. She chose to study nutritional sciences at LSU for the same reason, and she has mentored young people ever since.

She brought that same instinct to her children's schools. When bus driver shortages and sickouts left kids across the parish stranded, she worked alongside other parents to help secure a community bus stop at the Bluebonnet Library. That win taught her a lesson she has carried ever since. When parents show up, things change. Since then, she has been a regular voice at school board meetings, pushing for transparency and decisions backed by real data; has testified at the State Capitol; and has stood up for East Baton Rouge public schools when they were under threat.

Dani has served nine years on the PTO board at the Baton Rouge Center for Visual and Performing Arts, where she is Vice President for grades 3 through 5. She leads a Girl Scout troop, dances with the Golden Grannies, and works full time as a procurement specialist in healthcare.

She is running to put families first because she has spent her whole life proving that is not a slogan.