Loren Galler Rabinowitz, a gifted pianist, bronze-medal winning ice skater, and poet who graduated from Harvard in 2010 with plans to pursue a career in medicine, won the Miss Massachusetts title in 2010. She went on to compete in the Miss America competition in Las Vegas in January 2011, in the hopes of using the scholarship money to finance her medical education. She followed in the footsteps of the first, and (so far) only, Jewish Miss America, Bess Myerson, crowned in 1945. Rabinowitz describes herself as a “peanut in a world of beautiful amazons.” Unlike Bess Myserson, who faced anti-Semitism and discrimination throughout the pageant process, Rabinowitz felt right at home. “You don't have to be 5'10" and blonde to win. Miss America takes a much broader view of what it means to be beautiful." She adds, “The skating training comes in handy -- the posture and balance on enormously high heels…If you can do it on an eighth of an inch blade, then you can do it on stilettos,” she told a reporter. Though the 2011 Miss America crown went to Miss Nebraska Teresa Scanlan, Loren Galler-Rabinowitz remains an inspiration.

Sources: "Loren Galler Rabinowitz crowned Miss Massachusetts", icenetwork.com.