You're listening to serious inquiries only. Oh, Hello and welcome to Serious Inquiries only. This is episode 99. I'm your host Thomas Smith. Today I'm going to be joined by Crystal Lee. She was the first runner-up in Miss America 2014 and her platform was Women in STEM.

She's now the co-founder of a Silicon Valley startup and she's written some articles about

sort of the sexism that she's witnessed and some of the prejudging that she's also had to deal with

being who she is, where she is. We talk about that and it's also very interesting to

talk about pageants in general,

because this is something that was a major part of her life,

and obviously she was incredibly successful at them,

but also in this day and age, in the me too

and in the time when we're trying to, I don't know, I guess expose a lot of the previously

hidden sexism in our society, something like these Miss America pageants are an interesting question.

Are they sexist? Are they, should they still be around I talk to her about that and I think

you'll be interested in what she has to say so here we go without further ado

my interview with Crystal Lee.

Crystal, how you doing? I'm great Thomas, great to be on your podcast. Absolutely, I'm so happy to have you. We're crossing our

fingers that Skype is going to cooperate. We've been fighting it. That does happen sometimes, but that's okay.

Now, Crystal, I've read a couple pieces you've written relating to the Miss America

pageant and something that happened somewhat recently in the light of in light of Trump. I guess first let's talk about your background starting there and then we can once we get up to the story we can get back to

to these pieces you've written but how did you get into doing these pageants because in

2014 you were the runner-up for Miss America which is frankly incredible so

congratulations on that but how did you get started in that I had a tiger mom so

I grew up in San Francisco. My mom is an immigrant from Taiwan and I as a kid

wanted to be a swimmer. I actually love spending time in the pool. It was just me and my younger sister.

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