Meet Melissa Mejía
Rooted in Denver
For Melissa Mejía, Denver is the only home she's ever known. Her family moved here before she turned two, and she grew up on the Northside and the Westside. She spent her days bouncing between La Alma Lincoln Park, where she attended a bilingual elementary school, and Auraria Campus, where both of her parents worked as professors. She's the daughter of a Jewish, working-class mother from Minnesota and a Mexican father from Puebla, and she was raised to understand she was fully both, not half of each - bilingual, bicultural, and shaped by a mixed family long before "mixed family" was something people had a name for.
She attended DPS schools, including PS1, one of Denver's first charter schools, where an experimental, activism-infused curriculum that included annual camping trips, protests as coursework, and an outsized queer community left a permanent mark on her heart as well as her mind.
From Single Mom
to Policy Leader
After a decade working to support her family in restaurants, eventually as as a pastry chef, Melissa went back to school in her thirties. She earned a Bachelor's degree in psychology and Master of Public Administration from the University of Colorado, Denver all while working full time and raising two kids.
That path led her to working in policy, specifically housing policy, where she's spent her time as a tenant-rights advocate and, most recently, as Director of State and Local Policy at the Community Economic Defense Project. She led the campaign behind major 2024 state legislative wins on habitability standards, eviction protections, and anti-displacement law, and previously worked on rezoning policy as a Council aide in District 3. She now serves on Denver's Planning Board and the board of the Ardent Grove Foundation, a sliding-scale mental health nonprofit.
Why She's Running
Melissa currently lives in Chaffee Park with her youngest, a freshman starting DPS high school this fall (her oldest is a jazz piano student at the Berklee College of Music).
She is running for Denver City Council At-Large because she believes that together we can build a Denver where working people can afford to stay, where families can build a future, where immigrant communities are protected and welcomed, where workers have the freedom to organize and strong labor unions have a seat at the table, where our neighborhoods remain places of community and belonging, and where the people who make this city run have a real voice in the decisions that shape their lives.