You may call up her as the Miss US beaut pageant contestant known for wearing an insulin pump on national TV during the bathing suit challenger, but blighter type 1 Sierra Sandison is much more than that.

The Idaho-based 20-something is now finishing her degree in mechanical and biomedical engineering and has been a force hind end diabetes advocacy lobbying to lower insulin pricing in the United States.

Years after her 2014 Miss America run, she late put her name back into the beaut pageant arena with the place of empowering women who might want to enter the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (Shank).

We talked with Sierra new about all that she's accomplishing these days, and where her advocacy is leading.

Sierra Sandison

Diagnosed with type 1 diabetes (T1D) at age 18, Sandison struggled at first and even pretended she didn't have it in hopes that "it would honorable disappear," she told DiabetesMine. That led her to be disheartened, non knowing if she could fulfi her dreams.

Then again one daytime in church, Sandison learned about Nicole Johnson, who was crowned Miss United States of America in 1999 and the first dissident to ever wear an insulin pump while competing. Sandison, a pageant hopeful herself, plant something she didn't even cognise she was looking for.

"I immediately realized how wacky I had been to think that wearying an insulin pump would make me any less beautiful," Sandison says. "If any of my peers had a problem with me effortful a medical twist, then their opinions weren't rattling worth perturbing some anyways. I slowly realized that this was dependable for every 'flaw' I saw in myself."

She would go on to earn the Missy Idaho peak in June 2014, wearing her In tandem t:slim insulin pump on represent clipped onto her bikini. That spurred the viral hashtag #ShowMeYourPump on cultural media that helped Sandison win the rubric of People's Pick in the Miss America 2014 competition.

Six years advanced, Sandison re-entered the pageant world participating in the Miss Iadho USA competition in September 2020, in one case again wearing her t:thin and earning first runner-up. Despite not victorious, Sandison said she feels that her messages of empowerment are fetching on a broader scope.

"Unity thing I've educated over the years is that this wasn't good exalting to little girls scared of wearing their insulin pump, simply to all genders and ages," she says. "As I was preparing for the recent contender, I craved to get outdoors of just the diabetes box and this condition."

Now in her late 20s, Sandison says she is Thomas More concerned about affording her own health insurance once she is off her parents' coverage. That realization has led her to constitute to a greater extent thoughtful to, and critical of, diabetes organizations that don't address these affordability issues instantly.

After the first #ShowMeYourPump fervour years back, Sandison publicised a book titled Lettuce Linings roughly her experiences, and embraced the oral presentation circle at diabetes conferences around the country. She even biked crossways US with Beyond Type 1 (BT1) in 2017.

Despite her early advocacy with a variety of diabetes companies and groups, Sandison has more fresh suit a vocal counselor-at-law for the T1International #insulin4all movement, which is categorically grave of organizations that take up money from the pharma industry.

That led her to renounce from the advisory board of BT1 in first 2020 after she nonheritable the details of a funding insurance policy change that the aggroup made public in early 2019.

"I have seen how that money influences what they do, and I was thwarted that I hadn't heard about this… from them, merely rather from 'Twitter trolls' online."

She's also been questioning potential conflicts of interest with other diabetes advocacy orgs as of late.

Through it all, Sandison has maintained her focus on her Education in engineering. As a matter of fact, she believes her own T1D led her to this field.

"If you've ever heard Pine Tree State talk, I have this one line of business in my speeches about starting pageants and a supporter asked me about the particular talent I'd demonstrate… I made a joke astir solving a calculus problem to medicine," Sandison says. "And that would prompt masses to take me if that was because of diabetes maths, operating theatre if I was pursuing Root. After getting that question so many another times, I wondered why I wasn't majoring in that."

Now she is one of the only females majoring in engineering at Boise State University, with a major in mechanical engineering and a minor in biomedical engineering. At one point — as a former beauty queen — walking into an engineering classroom full of schoolboyish men she felt like the quality "Elle Wood" of the Legally Blonde movies walking into Harvard School of law. ("You got in present?!")

All of those experiences — from her sometimes frowned-upon beauty pageant engagement to speechmaking approximately the country at diabetes conferences — LED her to a warm hope to empower unusual women to move in STEM Fields, she says.

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"I know World Health Organization I am, what I think, how I neediness to make a difference in the world," she says. "I want to comprise a subject matter, and not right for girls who want to wear pink in their engineering classes, just any girl World Health Organization feels they need to 'tone down their personality' to constitute taken seriously in a male-henpecked field. My tagline: I want to breathe in girls justified when it's difficult, and to bon themselves, medical devices, and all."

Sandison says that when little girls Don't see female engineers, that limits their imaginations of what is realistic. That is one thing she'd comparable to see change.

Spell Sandison isn't yet definite exactly where her ambitions may take her career, she has some inviting ideas. With her biomedical engineering science minor, she's reasoned working on medical devices by perhaps joining a company like insulin pump maker Tandem Diabetes Care.

She's also tempted by the extremist-creative and fun sides of STEM. Currently, she is working as an engineering houseman at a toy company founded aside Caleb Chung, who created the famous talking robot, Furby, in the 1990s.

And she's fascinated by a New Mexico entertainment group identified equally Meow Wolf, which Sandison describes as a "discovery sum meets hightail it room meets colorful Disneyland." It's an art museum where each the art is interactive and requires engineering skills to build.

She also loves the idea of starting her own Boise-area franchise that could not only assist exhort kids to become engineers but bring in elements of diabetes and learned profession devices.

Her ultimate dream, she says, is maybe becoming the female technology counterpart of Bill Nye the Scientific discipline Guy, appearing regularly connected Netflix or YouTube to talk around the field. That type of project could also imply setting astir a Almighty blank, with 3D printers and distinguishable technology displayed.

"That would be so awesome, to bear a in sight woman engineer in front of kids showing the cool machines you can build," she says. "I want to help multitude understand what engineering science is and what it can equal used for. There are so many exciting things, and nobelium one as a kid connects engineering with those exhilarating career options."

No issue what Sandison decides, it is liquid she testament continue to inspire.