Meet Madison Marsh, the first active-duty Air Force officer to win Miss America

On Sunday night in Orlando, Florida, Madison Marsh, a 22-year-old second lieutenant in the US Air Force and a master's student in the public policy program at the Harvard Kennedy School, emerged victorious at the 2024 Miss America pageant. Representing Colorado, Ms Marsh made history as the first-ever active-duty Air Force officer to hold the national title.

"You can achieve anything. The sky is not the limit and the only person that's stopping you is you," Ms Marsh said in an interview shared via Miss America's Instagram story.

She further said that if she could come from "a small town, not being part of the pageant," and step into the pageant world, then so could anybody else.