Take one accounting alumna, add about fifty more women, one trip to Atlantic City, New Jersey, and what do you get? The Miss America Pageant.
This year’s Utah representative was Natalie Camille Johnson, who earned her BS in accountancy in 2002. She has the numbers to prove it too. Johnson has competed in seventeen pageants, earned more than $20,000 in pageant scholarships, spent thirteen years in formal piano education, and in the last three years devoted more than six thousand hours to volunteering.
Johnson, who is from Bountiful, Utah, was Miss Northern Utah until last summer when she was crowned Miss Utah, one week after she graduated from the Marriott School. “Being crowned Miss Utah 2002 was the culmination of years of hard work, practice, dedication, and a little bit of luck,” she says.
Johnson, who competed in her first pageant when she was seventeen, has competed in the Miss Utah pageant for the last three years. At first she was competing to overcome shyness and to earn money for college, but a few years ago it became more personal for her. “After my older brother Eric died in May 1999, my reason for competing became service. Eric died of a cancerous germ-cell tumor and malignant melanoma—the deadliest form of skin cancer,” she said. “Pageants gave me a forum where I could teach people about skin cancer prevention, detection, and treatment.”
Johnson competed in the Miss America Pageant on 21 September 2002; her talent was playing the piano, and her platform was skin cancer prevention education. Now her days are filled with speaking engagements and appearances. With the money she earned from pageant scholarships, Johnson plans on getting a master’s degree in health administration. “Since losing my brother, I have been interested in being in the medical field as a hospital administrator to use my accounting skills in a medical environment,” she says.
