Not one but two Clark County natives will take the stage at this winter’s Miss America pageant.
Katelynne Cox recently won the Miss District of Columbia title. She graduated from both Mountain View High School and Clark College in 2012 as a Running Start student.
She will compete alongside Abbie Kondel, 21, of Brush Prairie, who won the Miss Washington pageant.
“It’s going to be great,” Cox said.
Cox has been participating in pageants since she was 7. She was previously named Miniature Miss Washington and Miss Washington Jr. Pre-teen.
She competed in the Miss District of Columbia contest for the last four years, and at age 25, this was the last year she was eligible, she said.
She was thrilled to win, but also grateful for the chance to speak about her project, Silence Is Not Compliance, onstage for the first time. The project, according to its website, advocates for survivors of sexual assault and educates fifth- through 12th-graders about how to prevent and properly respond to sexual violence.
Judges asked her about the Me Too movement during the onstage interview portion of the contest.
“Out of these last four years, I haven’t gotten to talk about my organization on the stage,” Cox said. “As a rape survivor, that was the best part of the competition for me.”
Cox was attacked by someone she trusted in college.
“I have a lot of shame and guilt I had pinned myself under. I started SINC to help others to get the resources they need,” she said. “Being executive director has helped me heal my own wounds by bringing purpose to the traumatic thing that happened to me.”
After finishing her associate degree at 17, Cox continued her studies at the University of Missouri, where she completed her bachelor’s degree and two graduate certificates in nonprofit and public management.
When she left Clark County, she made the transition from the music industry as a signed recording artist to television, where she worked as an anchor and producer for KOMU-TV in Columbia, Mo., and Sports Entertainment Network.
Cox currently manages fundraising and events at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation in Washington, D.C. The $10,000 Miss District of Columbia scholarship will go toward tuition for the online MBA program she’s pursuing through Oregon State University.
She also won the $1,000 Miss America Community Service scholarship, as well as the Children’s National Miracle Maker Award for raising the most for Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals, the national social impact initiative for the Miss America Organization. Cox has volunteered for the Children’s Miracle Network since she was a child collecting and donating stuffed animals to the organization.
Miss America 2020 will probably mark the first time two Clark County natives compete against one another. Lois Elaine Smith-Zoll of Vancouver has been involved in Miss America for 53 years and said she can’t remember anything like this ever happening before.
“I’m more than thrilled to death,” Smith-Zoll said.
The date of the 2020 Miss America pageant has yet to be determined, but it will air on NBC.
