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Victoria Chuah has been a performer since she started dancing ballet at 18 months old, and next week she will be on one of America’s biggest stages.
The Ashburn native was chosen as Miss Virginia earlier this year and will be among 51 women competing for the Miss America 2023 title from Dec. 12-15 at Mohegan Sun resort in Connecticut.
Chuah, now 22, is the first Chinese-American Miss Virginia.
“I have always been a performer,” Chuah said, noting that she started in ballet with Conservatory Ballet in Reston. Being onstage is comfortable for her and “always something that I look forward to [and] enjoy.”
Chuah attended the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, where she participated in drama and student government. During her junior year, she saw an advertisement for the Miss Northern Virginia Pageant and thought, “I’m able to do all these things. I’m on stage all the time … and I do public speaking often.”
She competed and won Miss Northern Virginia that year, her first pageant. She won the Miss Arlington pageant this year, the local title that enabled her to compete for Miss Virginia.
Pageants have been another way for Chuah to perform, although distinctly different. “When I’m performing for ballet or drama, [I’m] doing a role… When you do the pageant, you’re not playing a character, you’re just representing yourself,” she said.
And while the audience at drama and ballet shows could see her talent and skills, the audience at pageants are “seeing a lot of you personally,” she explained. “It’s special because it’s rare to get to perform and be yourself. … There isn’t often an outlet or time where … everyone is there and they’re listening.”
Chuah wants to use her role to talk about breaking barriers and inviting diversity and awareness into areas that need it. One of those areas is awareness and advocacy for adults with autism, Chuah’s social impact initiative. She focuses on autism awareness and advocacy after living through the experience with her brother, Luke, who is two years younger than her and is on the autism spectrum.
“I get to do something and advocate for my brother which is something that, before the Miss America organization, I never thought that I would be able to do,” she said.
She advocates for the Autism Society of Northern Virginia and SourceAmerica in Vienna, both of which support the autism community with social, emotional and professional resources. “There are many different organizations that I feel aren’t normally brought to light,” Chuah said.
She’s also involved with Loudoun Therapeutic Riding and ARC of Loudoun and participates in the annual Golf Fore Reece event in Loudoun.
Also important to her is attracting more women into science and technology fields. She earned both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in computer science within four years from the David C. Frederick Honors College at the University of Pittsburgh. She was the only female in her master’s degree graduating class.
“There are so few women in the technology space and there needs to be more women because technology is everything,” she said. “I find the lack of women in tech a main motivation for me.”
During her sophomore year of college, she attended the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, a series of conferences designed to bring the research and career interests of women in computing to the forefront.
“It was so empowering to see that all these roles that you hope to one day fill or companies that you one day want to work with already have women there,” she said.
In turn, she hopes to be a role model for other people, which sometimes means charting new territory.
“It can be very difficult to be the only woman in the room,” Chuah said. “I’m not the representative for all women in tech, but that’s how it can feel sometimes.”
That sort of spotlight puts the pressure on, but that doesn’t stop Chuah.
“Anything that I’ve ever wanted to do, even if there have been odds stacked against me, … I have to do it, that’s just how I was raised,” she said. “[My family has] been so supportive in anything that I’ve wanted to do, whether that is getting my master’s degree or competing for Miss Virginia.”
Her responsibilities as Miss Virginia require lots of travel around the state and her home region of Northern Virginia.
“I grew up here. I’m in all the same places but I’m doing so many different things,” she said.
Since she earned the state title, Chuah also has been doing mock interviews and keeping up with current events in preparation for next week’s pageant.
“I’m going to the studio everyday practicing my ballet routine,” Chuah said. Her talent may be ballet, but the only character on stage will be Chuah as herself.
