Chandalae Lanouette

Lanouette is from Pfafftown, North Carolina, and attended Ronald W. Reagan High School.^[1]

Lanouette danced in the NFL as a member of the Carolina Topcats from the 2014 season to the 2018 Carolina Panthers season.^[2] As part of the team, she travelled to Ramstein Air Base in Germany to perform and boost morale for service members of the U.S. military.^[3] In 2018, she was selected to represent the Topcats at the 2018 NFL Pro Bowl.^[1]

After retiring from dancing in the NFL, Lanouette was hired as the director of the Carolina Topcats and entertainment manager of the Carolina Panthers.^[4][5] She has focused on diversity in dancers and in community outreach.^[2] In 2021, she hired the first three male cheerleaders on the Topcats, Tre' Booker, Melvin Sutton, and Chris Crawford, two of whom were also the first openly gay cheerleaders on the team.^[6] Lanouette also hired Justine Lindsay in 2022 as the first openly transgender cheerleader in the NFL.^[7] Lanouette led members of the squad in volunteering for the Mecklenburg Humane Society, Black Lives Matter, Transcend Charlotte, and the American Cancer Society.^[2] In 2024, she partnered with historically black colleges and universities to develop a talent pipeline into NFL cheerleading.^[8][9]

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