She competed in Regency International Pageant in 2020 and did not leave. What held her was not the crown but the shape of the thing: a system with preliminaries at state and national level around the world, divisions that begin at age four and run upward, Mr. divisions and plus-size divisions alongside them. "It is truly a place for everyone," she says, "and that was one of the reasons that I fell in love with it."
Today she is the California State Director for the RIO system. The California program is on track for more than sixty contestants this year, she says, drawn from backgrounds and communities across the state — and ninety percent of them have never competed in a pageant before. Most arrive, as she puts it, with very little experience and a wish to try something new and get outside their comfort zone.
That number is the center of how she thinks about the work. Having competed in several organizations herself, she is clear-eyed about the field: "not all Pageants are built equally." Being someone's first experience of pageantry is, to her, a responsibility worth taking seriously.
It is so special to be able to be the first experience that contestants get in the world of pageantry.
Becoming state director, she says, was about giving back — passing on the skills and the opportunities she was handed as a titleholder, when she grew in her career and served her community at the same time. Pageantry, in her account, hands people things that outlast the weekend. What she is building in California is a place to receive them: a culture, in her words, of kindness and growth.
