It only takes an instant for your life to change.
Johnny Carson School of Theatre and Film Alumna Nikki Kelly, of Keokuk, Iowa, found that out in the instant she was named Miss Iowa in June and will compete for Miss America on Sept. 15. The Miss America competition airs live from Atlantic City’s Boardwalk Hall on ABC-TV.
“I’m still trying to grasp the fact that I won Miss Iowa,” Kelly said, unable to imagine what it would be like to be named Miss America. “I haven’t quite gotten there yet.”
A little over a year ago in May 2012, Kelly was graduating from UNL in the Carson School’s directing and management program. After interning that summer at the Santa Fe Opera, she landed a coveted Friedman Internship at the Manhattan Theatre Club last Fall and was working on the Broadway production of “An Enemy of the People.” Last winter, she interned with the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, before returning earlier this year to New York to take the position of Child Guardian on the Broadway play “The Assembled Parties.”
Pageants were not necessarily part of the plan.
“I had never done a pageant ever before until the local round,” Kelly said.
In order to compete for Miss Iowa, contestants must compete in a local round to qualify at the state level. A friend was producing the Greater Des Moines Miss Metro pageant and encouraged Kelly to participate. She decided to try it and won.
“I kind of went into Miss Iowa thinking it would be a great learning experience,” she said. “So actually winning was very shocking. It was a lot of emotion, because literally my life changed right there in that one moment. There was a lot of shock and a lot of processing what my life was going to look like from here on out.”
Her job from June to Sept. 15 is getting ready for Miss America.
“I have a personal trainer that I have to go see,” she said. “One weekend, we’re flying into Florida to pick out the fancy dresses, and I have been making contacts with people and organizations who align with my platform. So it’s been a lot, but it’s good.”
Kelly was born without her left forearm, so her chosen platform is “overcoming disabilities.” She is eager to shine a spotlight on the organizations she is highlighting as part of her platform, which include the Shriner’s organization; VSA, which targets artists with disabilities; and the Lucky Fin Project, which is a project specifically for people with limb deficiencies or differences.
“We’re starting a campaign that is like the ‘It Gets Better’ campaign that targets the gay and lesbian communities,” Kelly said. “We’re going to do a riff off of that, where as I travel and visit all these people and these groups, then we will have people making videos and the like. It’s going to be targeting not just physical differences, but all kinds of differences—how have you felt different? And that can be anything from eating disorders to different mental health disorders or whatever it may be. The opportunity will be available for others to then post their own videos at well. I think it could be a really big thing and really cool.”
Kelly is surprised to suddenly have a national platform for her voice.
“I expected to be Iowa news, however, I didn’t expect to be national or international news, which I’ve kind of become,” she said. “So that kind of shifted things because I realized that people are looking to my voice that much more, so I’m really excited to intentionally target projects and people that I’m passionate about.”
Theatre was one way she overcame her own physical challenge.
“Theatre was the first place where I found it was acceptable to be stared at, and I wasn’t focused on being stared at in that situation,” Kelly said. “So that became a natural outlet, and I just clung on to that. It was within that group of people that I really found my family.”
Though her theatre career is on hold for now, she is using the training she received in the Johnny Carson School in her new pageant career.
“I was managing director of Theatrix,” Kelly said. “That was all learning to market and manage, specifically a show that was happening, but that’s directly translating into what I’m doing now. Yes, it’s more marketing of myself, but it’s really of my message. Everything that I did in school is quite literally now what I’m doing for my platform for Miss America right now.”
Kelly hopes she can combine her passions for both worlds—theatre and pageants.
“I definitely still want to be in the theatrical world, but seeing how quickly life can change just over the past few months, it’s hard to say,” she said. “I definitely now want to stay connected to both worlds because I found that I believe strongly in both worlds. I’m not quite sure yet what that means, but we’ll see.”
Right now, Kelly says the pageant world feels right.
“I am excited. I’m terrified to potentially walk on stage in front of millions of people in a swimsuit,” she said. “However, I think all the timing in life seems right. There’s a weird calm and a weird peace about what’s happening right now. It just feels right.”
Follow Nikki Kelly’s journey on Twitter @MissIowa2013.