By Madison Butkus
Hometown Weekly Reporter
The 2024 Miss Massachusetts Scholarship Competition was held at the Hanover Theatre in Worcester on Friday, June 21 with finals on Saturday, June 22. Included within the 25 contestants vying to be the 84th Miss Massachusetts was Kiersten Khoury, a 2019 graduate of Westwood High School (WHS) and a 2023 graduate of High Point University where she majored in Entrepreneurship. After a hard fought out competition, Khoury has won the competition and is now Miss Massachusetts 2024! She will go on to represent this great state in the upcoming Miss America competition happening in January 2025.
23-year-old Khoury, the daughter of Dr. Wassim Khoury and Dr. Dawn Khoury, additionally holds the title of Miss Bay State. She had started her pageantry journey in the 4th grade when she begged her mother to compete, and has now held an array of incredible pageant titles for the past 19 years.
All throughout these years, Khoury has learned of her true love and admiration for pageantry work. Thankful for her entire team supporting and training her, she believes that all of their hard work they have put in has led to this incredible moment. She additionally credits her time at WHS for preparing her for the ‘real world’ she leaped into once at college. “One of the things I really prided Westwood on,” Khoury stated, “was the fact that they kind of thought out of the box with their classes. One of the classes that stuck with me and that I was really excited to take was public speaking. I think that it is a wonderful thing that the school offers and that it is a requirement in order to graduate. No matter what you do outside of school, once you enter the real world, there will be public speaking to give some sort of presentation. So I really think it is wonderful that we are teaching students, especially in high school, that public speaking is a valuable skill.”
Khoury went on to use this valuable public speaking knowledge during the talent portion of the competition. While she originally conducted a tap dance performance, she wanted to change it up and take part in the HER Story initiative started by the Miss America organization. According to the Miss America website, “The HER Story talent option is a 90 second personal story shared on stage, that touches on one of the four points of the crown, or the foundation of our program which is ‘sisterhood’. As an alternative to a classic performing arts talent, HER Story allows you to both share a moving moment, while engaging in the oldest form of talent, ‘story telling.’”
For this competition, Khoury shared her personal journey of her battle with dyslexia and how she learned to manage it, which she titled “Undefined.” She explained that when she was in grade school, she was initially embarrassed by it and felt as if it was holding her back. As time went on, she began to overcome this doubt and appreciate all the good that dyslexia had brought into her life. Khoury beamed about how much more organized she feels and the better time management she has learned while overcoming dyslexia. For her, she made it an important point to not only find the positives within having this disability, but also find the positives in life itself.
Combined with the talent portion of the competition, Khoury additionally participated in the evening wear, onstage questions and swimsuit categories. This was her second time competing in the competition in which she placed in the Top 10 last year and was the overall interview winner. When discussing last year’s competition, Khoury detailed that it was a little difficult for her due to an illness she was battling at the time, but once she stepped out on stage, she gave it her all.
This is the same type of mindset Khoury had when competing this year as she explained that it would mean everything to her if she went on to win the title. And that is exactly what she did! She described the overall experience of this competition as one of the greatest moments of her life. “I felt pretty confident going in,” Khoury explained, “but you can never truly know for sure how you are going to do. Everything moves so quickly throughout the competition you don’t really have time to focus on being nervous. But when I won, it was like an out-of-body experience. I felt so much joy, something that I will never forget”
It is clear to see that Khoury did exceptionally well within this competition and was even able to shed more light onto her Community Service Initiative, “Check the Chicas,” which focuses on breast cancer awareness and support. She accredits her hard work and dedication over the past 19 years within this industry as a true blessing which went on to form her, into what she states to be, the best version of herself. She encourages all young women out there to try their hand in pageantry if it is of interest to them, for they will learn invaluable skills that they may not learn anywhere else. “As women,” Khoury emphasized, “we truly can do it all.”
On behalf of Hometown Weekly Newspaper, we would like to congratulate Kiersten Khoury on being crowned Miss Massachusetts 2024!
