Beauty Queen Turned Mental Health Champion

Avy Taylor BA’22 has traveled far since her days hitchhiking alone across Peru. It was 2020 and it had been only a few weeks since Taylor had dropped out of The University of Texas at Austin following what she describes as a breakdown. She just couldn’t continue the path she was on, she told herself. She had to make a drastic change in her life and that change first took her to Peru.

“I’ve been across the world, and I’ve lived in the slums of Peru where I stuck my thumb out to hitchhike,” Taylor said. “I traveled by myself when I was 20 carrying a backpack that I bargained for in a market in Peru. At the time, I didn’t know who I was, but I do now.”

For Taylor, her trip to Peru and the trials she endured leading to that adventure are just a few of the hardships she’s endured. From being traumatized as a young child due to a stutter to being diagnosed with severe clinical depression at age 12, Taylor sought to be comfortable with who she is her entire young life. That journey includes her time at The University of Texas at Dallas, where she said she began to find herself, to today as she explores her new roles as a beauty pageant winner and creative marketing professional.

Taylor was born and has lived nearly her entire life in North Texas. She decided when she graduated from high school to enroll at Florida State University, but the distance from home was too much. She transferred to UT Austin where she majored in biochemistry on a pre-medical school track, but she struggled in the large school that she felt was impersonal and isolating. Overwhelmed by academic pressure and the stress to be perfect, Taylor began to slide deeper into the depths of her condition.

“For as long as I can remember, I’ve struggled with depression,” Taylor said. “I struggled a lot with staying silent because I wasn’t open about my depression. When you’re silent, of course, that just makes things worse.”

One day in the UT Austin library, she realized that the life she had planned for herself was not authentic to her. She had reached a breaking point and, against the guidance of everyone around her, she decided to drop out of school. In search of a new direction, Taylor learned about a girl’s shelter in a Peruvian slum that needed caretakers. A Spanish speaker, Taylor applied for a volunteer position at the shelter managed by the Santa Martha Foundation and soon was on a flight to the Peruvian capital of Lima.

The shelter was in a compound two hours outside Lima where girls ages 8 to 14 live during the week while their mothers travel to the city for work. For five days a week, Taylor cared for girls by cooking for them, doing laundry and other chores and providing tutoring. On weekends, when her girls went home, she backpacked around the country.

“I lived in a slum and cared for 20 girls. I listened to them tell me about their dreams while we did our chores. Working there changed my life,” Taylor said. “They’re telling me that when they grow up, they want to be doctors or police officers, but the economy of Peru is not made to sustain their dreams. It was then that I decided to go back to college with the hope of helping girls like these through policy and economic reform.”

Taylor’s time in Peru ended suddenly as the world shut down because of the COVID-19 pandemic. In early 2020, the Peruvian president announced that the country was being locked down and restricting flights by closing its airports to international flights. Scrambling to get out, Taylor was able to get a seat on one of the last flights leaving the country.

Now back home in North Texas, Taylor visited the UT Dallas campus and immediately felt a difference. The attitude toward students was so different than anything she experienced at other schools and was exemplified by the signs on the UTD campus proclaiming, “You Belong Here.”

“That was how I knew that the University would care about me and that they cared about my success. It was such a stark contrast,” Taylor said.

Taylor began classes at UTD in the fall of 2021, enrolling in the School of Interdisciplinary Studies where she focused on public health and political science. She said attending UT Dallas was the first time in her life that she felt validated. She was especially close to Dr. Azadeh Stark, an assistant professor in interdisciplinary studies who mentored Taylor. Stark hired Taylor as a teaching assistant to help with her class on U.S. healthcare systems.

“I told Dr. Stark my story, and she believed in me,” said Taylor. “It was very special to me to be mentored by her and to be given responsibility as a TA as an undergraduate.”

Taylor graduated in December 2022 and works as the marketing manager for Architexas, a Dallas architecture firm. She also works as a marketing coordinator for the mental health advocacy nonprofit, Mental Health America.

In the short time since graduation, Taylor discovered the world of pageants, winning the Miss Lewisville title in January 2024. She is now preparing for the Miss Texas scholarship pageant in June.

“After I graduated from UTD, I was so hungry for professional growth and I was inspired by the former Miss Texas, Averie Bishop,” Taylor said. “I had never given any thought to competing in pageants before until I became aware of what she has done as Miss Texas.”

Taylor said competing in pageants has given her a chance to show the world who she is. Those aspects of her life include being an improv comedian who performs in comedy clubs and who shows off her love of rock ‘n’ roll by playing the music of Guns and Roses, Van Halen and Queen for pageant competitions

“The hardest thing for me in competing was figuring out how to tailor myself for the public,” Taylor said. “So, I decided to highlight all the things that make me different like pitching myself as the funny girl and loving rock ‘n’ roll. Now I call myself the ‘rock ‘n’ roll pageant queen.’”

But for Taylor, the most important part of pageant participation is sharing her story through her platform focused on mental health and creative empowerment.

“My platform as a pageant contestant is showing that I’m a vulnerable, authentic and transparent person. That is actually my strength,” Taylor said. “And I want to represent people who feel like they’re being held back because of mental illness and show them that you can always be successful despite what hardships they’ve been through.”

Taylor said she also wants to represent people who grew up, as she did, with depression. She said one of the most enjoyable parts of being a pageant queen is visiting schools and interacting with children.

“My platform is about empowering kids in the shadows and inspiring them to be their best selves,” Taylor said. “I never had a professional role model to look up to who was honest about their lived experiences of mental illness … and that’s why I put myself in crazy, uncomfortable, difficult situations, to learn how to help people.”

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