Samantha Keene Anderson (born December 12, 1997) 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 from

Chandler, Arizona Chandler is a city in Maricopa County, Arizona, United States, and a suburb in the Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA). It is bordered to the north and west by Tempe, to the north by Mesa, to the west by Phoenix, to the ...

, who was crowned

Miss United States Miss United States is a pageant held in the United States for unmarried women between the ages of 20-29. The pageant includes women selected to represent all 50 states, District of Columbia, American Samoa, Guam, Commonwealth of the Northern Mar ...

2021. She previously held the title of Miss Teen Arizona. Anderson was orphaned in 2014 when both of her parents were killed in a plane crash in

Telluride, Colorado Telluride is the county seat and most populous town of San Miguel County in the southwestern portion of the U.S. state of Colorado. The town is a former silver mining camp on the San Miguel River in the western San Juan Mountains. The first ...

. After her parents' death, Anderson became an advocate for diversity in

aviation Aviation includes the activities surrounding mechanical flight and the aircraft industry. ''Aircraft'' includes fixed-wing and rotary-wing types, morphable wings, wing-less lifting bodies, as well as lighter-than-air craft such as hot air ...

. Anderson's mother, Sherry, was one of the first female pilots to fly for a commercial airline.

References

Living people 1997 births American beauty pageant winners People from Chandler, Arizona Virginia Tech alumni {{US-pageant-bio-stub