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Nina Davuluri, who made history last year as the first Indian-American to win the Miss America pageant, ended her reign on Sept. 14 by crowning Miss New York Kira Kazantsev as the new winner. Kaantsev’s win marked the third consecutive year Miss New York won the competition. The 25-year-old dusky beauty, who was a pre-med student prior to winning the Miss New York crown, spent most of this year traveling through the country, sparkling tiara on head, as the National Goodwill Ambassador for Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals. Through the Miss America Organization, Davuluri has won more than $92,000 in scholarship money, of which $62,000 remains. She plans to use to it to earn an MBA in international relations, ThePressofAtlanticCity.com reported.
Davuluri told the paper that the past year as Miss America has been a whirlwind. “And I’ve been living out of those two suitcases ever since,” said. As spokeswoman for the Miss America Organization, Davuluri traveled almost 186,000 miles this past year. “That’s nearly the distance to the moon, just to put it in perspective,” she said.
The Miss America has held meetings with members of U.S. Department of Education to discuss the Miss America Organization’s promotion of higher education and STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) careers among young women, and has worked to promote her personal pageant platform, “celebrating diversity through cultural competency,” to increase people’s ability to understand, communicate with and effectively interact with people across all cultures, the paper said.
“Miss America has always been viewed as the girl next door, and I grew up feeling like I could never be in this role, because I didn’t look like the stereotypical Miss America,” she said.
“My goal for this organization was to reach out to a new demographic of young women that is representative of America today. It was really about reaching out to that young girl who was watching the competition that night — for her to finally be able to say, ‘Wow, this year’s Miss America looks like me, and I don’t have to fit a stereotype or mold to be successful.’”
Davuluri began competing in pageants at age 16 through the Miss Michigan’s Outstanding Teen competition, which is a feeder into Miss America and a part of the Miss America Organization.
As a University of Michigan student, where she earned a degree in behavioral and cognitive science, she was eligible to compete in the Michigan competition. She became first runner-up and won $25,000 in scholarships.
She is the youngest daughter of doctors Sheila Ranjani and Davuluri Koteshwara Choudhary, who immigrated to New York from Andhra Pradesh in 1981.
Born in Syracuse, New York, her family moved to Oklahoma when she was four, and then to Michigan, where she grew up, and where she eventually graduated from the University of Michigan.
During the Miss America pageant, Davuluri beat out 52 contestants with a Bollywood-inspired dance performance and a platform of “Celebrating Diversity through Cultural Competency.” Though her win was marred with an online barrage of racist tweets and social comments – questioning Davuluri’s American identity and incorrectly calling her Arab and Muslim – she met her first challenge wearing the crown with grace and aplomb, rising above fray and focusing on her year ahead.
Her official Twitter account has 50.8 K followers, and if one wants to catch a glimpse of how her busy day goes, check out her official Instagram page, which reveals a whirlwind of activities in her year of service.
