Cierra Kaler-Jones (born May 29, 1993) is an American
beauty pageant
A beauty pageant is a competition that has traditionally focused on judging and ranking the physical attributes of the contestants. Pageants have now evolved to include inner beauty, with criteria covering judging of personality, intelligence, ...
titleholder who was crowned
Miss New Jersey
The Miss New Jersey competition is an annual pageant held to select the representative for the state of New Jersey in the Miss America pageant.
Two Miss New Jersey winners have gone on to hold the title of Miss America: Bette Cooper who won in ...
2014. She is the second
African American
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...
to win the title of Miss New Jersey after
Suzette Charles
Suzette Charles (born Suzette DeGaetano, March 2, 1963) is an American singer, entertainer, and actress. She was Miss New Jersey in 1983, and served as Miss America 1984 for seven weeks after Vanessa L. Williams resigned from the position that Ju ...
in 1983. Her heritage also includes Native American, Irish, Filipino and German ancestry.
Background
Kaler-Jones is from
Galloway Township, New Jersey
Galloway Township is a township in Atlantic County,in the U.S. state of New Jersey. At of total area of land and water, Galloway Township is the largest municipality in the state. and attended Absegami High School. Kaler-Jones is a graduate of
Rutgers University
Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a Public university, public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's ...
where she majored in Social Work with concentrations in Women's & Gender Studies, and Critical & Comparative Race & Ethnic Studies.Official website . She attended Rutgers as a first generation college student. In addition, she spent her first three years at Rutgers on the nationally ranked Rutgers University Dance Team and worked as a research assistant in the Rutgers School of Social Work and has interned with the ACLU of New Jersey and the criminal justice division of the state attorney general's office.
She is currently a graduate student in Education and Human Development.
Pageants
Kaler-Jones is a former Miss Atlantic County, Miss Northern Lakes, Miss Cape Shores, and Miss Coastal Shore. In response to questions about the relevance of the Miss America pageant, she has stated: "What's more relevant than a powerful woman?" She was named
Miss New Jersey
The Miss New Jersey competition is an annual pageant held to select the representative for the state of New Jersey in the Miss America pageant.
Two Miss New Jersey winners have gone on to hold the title of Miss America: Bette Cooper who won in ...
2014 on June 14 with the platform: "Empowering Today’s Youth Through Arts Education." Her talent was a self-choreographed contemporary dance to
Beyoncé
Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter ( ; born September 4, 1981) is an American singer, songwriter, and actress. Beyoncé's boundary-pushing artistry and vocals have made her the most influential female musician of the 21st century, according to ...
's "
Listen
Listen may refer to:
* The action of listening
* Auditory system#Central auditory system, Central auditory system listening is how the brain processes what you hear
* Listening behaviour types in human communication
Computing
* LISTEN, a Transm ...
". (She was a member of Rutgers Dance Team). Kaler-Jones competed in part because some people told her that she "couldn't be Miss New Jersey because I didn't look a certain way or didn't fit a certain mold" and she wondered why not.