Pageant News Bureau - Syma Chowdhry

Imagine Syma Chowdhry on a chessboard. What kind of chess piece would she be?

She would be a queen, of course, but not just because she looks beautiful in a crown. In chess, a queen can move any distance in any direction, and Ms. Chowdhry is in that very same position. There's no telling where she will go next.

"My motto is 'everything in life.' I do it for the moment," says this Hindi-speaking, belly-dancing, bright and bubbly "Jersey girl."

She has already come a long way from Square One. (That's chess talk.) She hosted a local TV show when she was still a teenager, interviewing people in interesting occupations -- "body piercers, tattoo artists, private detectives."

Then she became a model. She's one of the best-known faces with UModels, the hip agency that took the glamour business online. You may remember her from a PNB story about the agency's founder.

In the pageant game, Ms. Chowdhry is racing to fame on parallel tracks. In 2002, she was third runner-up to Miss New Jersey in the Miss America system. Just a few months later, she was first runner-up to Miss Pennsylvania USA. In January 2003, she was crowned Miss Central Coast, qualifying again for Miss New Jersey.

"I like both systems," she says of Miss America and Miss USA, "so why not do both?" (She competes in two states because she lives in New Jersey and attends college in Pennsylvania.)

She's studying broadcast journalism, but not so she can get backstage at the Oscars. She wants to be a political correspondent, or perhaps a media lawyer. Meanwhile, she's working as an intern at a WB station.

Maybe you have some guesses about what Syma Chowdhry's next move will be. Maybe you have opinions about what her next move ought to be. All we know is that she never made a move we didn't like.

Pageant photos courtesy of Syma Chowdhry, others by Michael Pilla

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