South Middlesex Times

Jabili Kandula is not afraid to go after her dreams, even when those dreams defy expectations.

She wants to be an aviation journalist. Check.

She wants to be crowned a beauty pageant winner. Check.

She wants to be a professional pilot and inspire other women to enter the aviation field. Working on it.

Kandula, who graduated from Rutgers-New Brunswick in 2022, was crowned Miss New Jersey USA in June and will represent the state in the Miss USA pageant on Aug. 4 in Los Angeles.

She is competing to be the first Miss USA from New Jersey. If she wins, she said she would also be the first Miss USA of Indian descent.

“There’s a stereotype that if you’re from this background, you can only be this one thing and I’m trying to show other Indian girls that you can be a pilot, you can be a beauty queen, you can be a journalist,” Kandula said. “It doesn’t matter where you’re from, you can succeed.”

Kandula is following in the footsteps of other Indian women. She started watching pageants a decade ago when Nina Davaluri won Miss America in 2014, becoming the first Indian American woman to wear the crown. In 2017, Chhavi Verg was named Miss New Jersey USA and became first runner-up in that year’s Miss USA pageant. Miss America and Miss USA are separate pageants; Miss America started in Atlantic City in 1921 whereas Miss USA began in 1952 as a qualifier for Miss Universe.

“I felt like I wanted to continue their legacies and give the same feeling of hope and inspiration to another girl as they did for me,” said Kandula, 24.

Kandula’s parents and sister are all in the medical field, but she became interested in aviation as a young teen after picking up an illustrated book on Amelia Earhart. She admired how Earhart overcame challenges and resisted stereotypes.

“Every day since I would read about her, and I even dressed up as her for a project in middle school,” she recalled. “One day I decided I wanted to be just like her and started this aviation journey.”

Kandula took her first flight at 18, and by 20, had received her license to fly single-engine planes. She is working on her instrument-rating and commercial pilot license which will allow her to become a pilot for private carriers. Kandula was the first woman president of the Rutgers Aviation Club and has logged about 150 hours of the required 1,500 hours of airtime.

She received her bachelor’s degree in journalism and media studies from Rutgers' School of Communication and Information and landed a job at industry publication Aviation for Women.

Using her connections in aviation and her title as Miss New Jersey USA, Kandula promotes careers in aviation for women by appearing at schools. In September, she will participate in Girls in Aviation Day's 10th anniversary celebration.

“I’m using my title to build a bigger audience to inspire girls to follow their dreams regardless of their background,” Kandula said. “I aim to be a leader that I wish I had growing up.”

Roughly five percent of airline pilots are women while only 3.6 percent are captains according to the Federal Aviation Administration's Women in Aviation Advisory Board Report (2022). The percentage for women of color who are pilots or captains is less than one percent according to the same report.

“I haven’t been able to see myself represented through my community," Kandula said. "I want another girl so that she knows you can be multiple things no matter your background."

"Representation is so important," she added." "I’m a first-generation American now; we need representation across different aspects of society so we know we belong here.”