Jasmine Williams
Miss Long Island 2021
Jasmine is extremely grateful and honored to be crowned Miss Long Island 2021. She is from Elmont, where she attended elementary, middle, and high school. She went on to pursue undergraduate studies at St. John’s University and graduate studies at Howard University in speech language pathology. Jasmine currently serves students with moderate to severe intellectual disabilities. She grew inspiration from her older brother who has autism, mother who works as occupational therapist, and her father who was a doctor in a low socioeconomic community. Jasmine was also a Camp ANCHOR volunteer, which also influenced her career decision.
During Jasmine’s reign as Miss Long Island, Jasmine plans to host free workshops for parents who have children with special needs through her program “Together We Talk”. Her program provides specific methods, videos, and resources of how to interact with children to improve their communication skills. These strategies are practical, family centered, and play/conversational based to increase communication skills. These workshops are a way to coach parents as to how to maximize each communication encounter to increase speech and language skills. Together We Talk believes that parents/caregivers should be their child’s main language teachers. She especially wants to host these workshops in low socioeconomic communities where schools and communities are limited in funding, limited in speech therapists, and where there a high demand of children who need speech and language services. Jasmine has previously presented autism research projects at Harvard University, The American Speech Language Hearing Association (ASHA) Convention, and other national conventions in D.C. and Wisconsin.
Even though Jasmine is new to pageantry, her favorite part is interview. This provides Jasmine the opportunity to be face to face with the judges, as well as share personal values and goals for the future. Watching young women such as Kara McCullough and Cheslie Kryst sparked her interest in pageantry and shows that representation is crucial. Jasmine also plans to positively impact young girls by hosting monthly programs about inclusivity with Girl Scouts in Nassau County. During her leisure, she enjoys spending time with family and friends, strength training, and watching documentaries.
Now that Jasmine is Miss Long Island, she is eager to host her parent workshops, and start her journey to Miss New York USA.
Olivia Collins
Miss Long Island Teen 2021
Directors Award Teen
Olivia is very excited to have been given the honor of being crowned Miss Long Island Teen 2021 and is overjoyed to be welcomed into the sisterhood. Despite this being her first pageant Olivia is ready to take the pageant world by storm and can't wait to begin her reign.
In her year as Miss Long Island Teen 2021, Olivia hopes to positively impact her community, lead by example and use her title to bring awareness to her platform.
Olivia's platform of choice is suicide and mental health awareness. She says it is an issue she has seen too many people suffer from and it is also something she has experienced herself first hand. Olivia hopes that by sharing her story and experiences, it will let people know they are not alone.
This 16 year-old is currently a junior at Riverhead High School and plans to graduate and attend college in hopes to pursue a career in psychology so she may help in the mental health community.