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There She Goes, Miss Roanoke Valley . . .

Congratulations to Ashna Sharan, a 2012 graduate of Washington and Lee. This past Saturday, Oct. 13, she won a $2,700 scholarship and the title of Miss Roanoke Valley, which means she will be competing for another title next June: Miss Virginia.

Ashna, a Johnson Scholar from Chantilly, Va., double-majored in business administration and politics. She belonged to the Nu Delta Alpha national dance honor society and to W&L Student Consulting, and worked as a campus tour guide. Ashna also served as a peer counselor and as a peer tutor for calculus. She choreographed pieces for the W&L Repertory Dance company and performed a dance during Science, Society and the Arts, the University’s every-other-year research conference; it’s no surprise that her talent for the pageant was a Bollywood number. It’s also no surprise that during her senior year, Ashna was named a General of the Month by the W&L Celebrating Student Success initiative.

Ashna received an Erik T. Wooley Fellowship grant to work as a marketing intern in Peru. Afterward, she wrote about her experience with the nonprofit Peru 109, where she sought to advertise the services of a women’s shelter that aids victims of domestic abuse. You can read that essay here, on the Shepherd Poverty Program website.

Miss Roanoke Valley is not Ashna’s first pageant title; she also served as Miss Virginia Dogwood 2012. If she takes the crown as Miss Virginia, it’ll be on to the Miss America pageant.

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