Running! is a Teen Vogue series on getting involved in the government.

Liliana Bakhtiari is no stranger to activism. She attended her first protest march when she was 8 years old, with her father, a first-generation Iranian immigrant. “I grew up working and doing community service, social justice work, and community organizing and activism,” she tells Teen Vogue. Now the 29-year-old, who grew up in the Atlanta area, is hoping to effect change in a different way: as an Atlanta City Council member for District 5. And though Bakhtiari is relatively young, her life has been packed with experiences that have helped shape her views and her platform.

Bakhtiari’s mother, a second-generation Iranian immigrant, worked to put Bakhtiari’s father through school at Georgia State University. He eventually opened a pharmacy in Atlanta’s historic Sweet Auburn district, providing affordable medicine to people who previously couldn’t access it, and Bakhtiari was right by his side. “I grew up working at my dad’s pharmacy with him,” she says. “I saw a lot of Atlanta at the time when it was really just rampant poverty.” Read more via Teen Vogue