Oldest Asian America beauty pageant crowns Lisa Yan, Angella Lee as winners

The United States’ oldest Asian American beauty pageant has crowned Lisa Yan as this year’s Miss Asian Global and Angella Lee as Miss Asian America 2022.

During an interview with KRON4’s Stephanie Lin, who was announced Miss Asian America in 2015, Yan said she competed in this year’s Miss Asian Global and Miss Asian America Pageant without any expectations. She also admitted that she was shocked when her name was announced.

“Personally for me, I think I was just trying to have a lot of fun with it,” Yan told Lin. “I met a lot of really sweet and loving people for the first time during the pageant week. so it was a huge surprise when my name was called. I usually don’t do pageants so I had no expectations going in.”

Meanwhile, Lee said that the Miss Asian Global and Miss Asian America Pageant was her first-ever competition, adding that it was “kind of a challenge and a new space for me too, but you know the night just kind of flourished. It kind of went on the way that we rehearsed it.”

Lee also shared that the evening of the competition was “so nerve-wracking and exciting all at the same time.” She added, “I was never filled with so many emotions in my life.”

Lee was born and raised in Southern California and moved to San Francisco after graduating from nursing school. She later found her calling in aesthetic medicine and has been working as an aesthetic nurse injector.

Yan grew up in Palo Alto, California, and has been working as a software engineer at Waymo, a company closely connected to Google that improves safety and accessibility for self-driving cars.

For their platform, Yan said she wants to address mental health, which “often goes unspoken in our Asian community because we often have stigmas associated with therapy and things like that.”

“My platform is to really allow and push people to be their authentic self and be their best self. … I really love being able to represent and really encourage other Asian women to really be their best self both inside and out,” Lee told Lin.

Founded in 1985, with Jeannette Chan being crowned as the competition’s first-ever winner, the Miss Asian Global and Miss Asian America Pageant is “committed to the personal and professional growth of young Asian women” and “empower them to break into leadership,” its official website states.

Featured Image via KRON4

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