The Miss Pennsylvania crown was not a goal for Alysa Bainbridge ’21, but a calling.

The Berks County, Pennsylvania native competed in pageants throughout her life. Her mother, Michele Bainbridge, led the now-inactive Pennsylvania’s Outstanding Young Woman program even before Bainbridge was born, so she was always surrounded by powerful women, some of whom went on to become Miss Pennsylvania.

Bainbridge knew from the get-go that she wanted that title. She worked her way from the Little Miss Apple Dumpling pageant all the way up to the Miss America competition.

One major step was winning the Miss Philadelphia title in 2019 and then “the next dream was to be Miss Pennsylvania,” Bainbridge said.

Spoiler alert: she conquered that dream. Bainbridge won the crown in June 2022.

Bainbridge credits much of who she is to her guidance from St. Joe’s, where she earned her Bachelor of Arts in communications and minor in journalism. After she won Miss Philadelphia, she was also awarded a full tuition scholarship to get her graduate degree through Cabrini University’s Master of Science in Leadership program. 

Rachael Sullivan, Ph.D., assistant professor of communications, was Bainbridge’s academic advisor at St. Joe’s. Bainbridge mastered Sullivan’s Advanced Design course, and Sullivan said she was always well-prepared and detail oriented.

“I remember that a lot of her projects were really thoughtful and well put together,” Sullivan said. “She was really great to have in class. She had a very warm personality, very approachable.”

Sullivan also said she learned a lot about pageants through Bainbridge.

“It was a blessing to talk with her, because I think an outsider thinks of them as beauty pageants or just about appearances, but if you don’t watch Miss America or Miss Universe, you don’t know anything about it,” Sullivan said. “I didn’t realize that it’s basically a community service role.”

In 2020, Bainbridge won a Commy Award for Outstanding Multimedia Blog Post on behalf of St. Joe’s Department of Communications & Digital Media for her work in the Beautiful Social Research Collaborative.

Alongside her Miss Pennsylvania aspirations, Bainbridge had wanted to become a TV reporter for as long as she could remember. She wrote for the Hawk and interned for Fox29 as an undergraduate. After graduating in 2021, she went on to work as a news reporter at WRDE, a TV news station operating out of Delaware and Maryland. She even reported live from the WRDE chopper.

Bainbridge said these positions were a great preparation for what’s to come in her career. After her duties as Miss Pennsylvania are through, Bainbridge plans to return to TV news. 

Bainbridge looks back on her time at St. Joe’s fondly, and attributes her interest in leadership to being a part of the sorority Sigma Sigma Sigma where she was the sisterhood chair, Greek Council delegate and an executive board member of Greek Council.

That leadership shines in pageants like the Miss American competition. Bainbridge describes pageants as an outlet for empowering women by building confidence, life skills and interview skills, but acknowledges the stereotypes and stigma around pageantry.

“I think they’re catching up with the times now and proving to society that it is more about empowering women and giving women opportunities than your traditional beauty pageant,” Bainbridge said. “Miss America is the largest scholarship provider to women in the country. That’s what I try to preach and show people as Miss Pennsylvania.”

Natalie Burkert ’21, Bainbridge’s friend and former roommate at St. Joe’s, sponsored Bainbridge for an event with the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia in May 2019. 

“I was watching from the sidelines, and I could see how she’s a natural star and leader,” Burkert said. “Everybody kind of radiates towards her and even when she wasn’t wearing the crown, you can tell that people were looking up to her and wanting to be like her, especially all those little kids.” 

Bainbridge’s journey was not all crowns and roses, though. Both of her siblings faced mental health struggles as they grew up, and Bainbridge lost her older brother, Tyler, to an opioid overdose in 2018 due to untreated mental illness. 

Burkert remembers being by Bainbridge’s side after she received the news about her brother. 

“I did my best to cheer her up and keep her mind off of things,” Burket said. “She didn’t take a leave of absence or anything, she continued school, and she continued to rush to try and get through it.”

Through her grief, Bainbridge worked to dedicate her platform to mental health and substance abuse awareness. She founded Tyler’s Triumph: The More Than Project in June 2021, an organization working to provide financial assistance and other support to people who are in recovery from substance use disorders. 

Bainbridge’s current work as Miss Pennsylvania involves the More Than program tour, during which she speaks to students of all ages, from elementary school to college, about ending the stigma around mental health struggles, what mental health intervention is and how to care for their own mental health.

“I started the More Than Project to let other people who were living with a mental illness or any kind of struggle know that there’s so much more than that struggle, and that they are loved and that they’re worthy,” Bainbridge said. “I believe that when we remind people of that, and when we look people in the eye and tell them that, it can make a huge difference in their day and in their journey.”