For Sophia Xia, being a pageant winner means more than wearing a crown and sash. She’s a scholar and researcher, athlete and fitness role model, mentor and leader of a youth skin health advocacy movement. She’s embracing every passion and challenging the idea that young women have to fit into just one box.
Plenty has been written about how teens and young adults have grown up facing negative influences, from remote learning to social media. But something positive is brewing in how Gen Z gives back their way. Here’s how the younger generation uses their unique skills in the fight against skin cancer.
By Melanie Hertgen
Sophia Xia was crowned Miss Illinois Teen USA in 2025. She’s also the founder of Project Save Our Skin — a student-led nonprofit dedicated to promoting confidence through skin health advocacy. She majors in biophysics and minors in math and international studies at the University of Michigan. She works in a research lab and is involved in a campus blockchain club (just for fun). She boxes. She’s run four half-marathons. And she’s doing it all while (figuratively) wearing a crown and sash. She’s not just using them as an accessory; she’s leveraging her platform to start a nationwide movement around advocacy for young people’s skin health.
In an era when the pageant world still battles outdated stereotypes, Sophia’s platform represents a different perspective. She’s a beauty queen who refuses to be boxed in by anyone’s expectations. You can be intelligent, ambitious and, of course, beautiful, all at once. And perhaps more importantly, she’s showing an entire generation of young women that they don’t have to be forced to choose.
Acne to Advocacy
Like any ordinary teen, Sophia struggled with severe acne. She tried so many remedies, she ended up with a bathroom counter filled with half-used skin-care products. One day, she asked herself a simple question: What if these products could help someone else? She set up a donation box at her local library and collected more than 400 products in just a month to donate to a local domestic violence shelter.
What began as a donation drive quickly evolved into something bigger. “Throughout the initial journey, I was learning more about skin and skin cancer, and not only how deadly it is, but how easily preventable it is,” she explains. Even more concerning was the disconnect in science and sun safety messaging she was seeing online targeting the young. Social media platforms now make it easier than ever to fall for misinformation, with many influencers claiming “tanning beds are safe for a base tan” or that “sunscreen causes skin cancer.” Throughout this research phase, Sophia learned that health education doesn’t just have to come from adults lecturing kids. Maybe peer-to-peer education could be more effective. She wanted to start letting her generation know that “sunscreen isn’t just skin care; it’s something that can save your life.”
Mission Project Save Our Skin
Sophia realized that this could become a real movement. After organizing a few donation drives, other high-school peers showed interest in joining her cause. One friend offered to handle social media. Another reached out to community shelters. And before they knew it, Project Save Our Skin was born.
Soon, the organization expanded beyond product donations to fundraising for charity. Their first fundraiser was hosted at a local CycleBar studio to support The Skin Cancer Foundation. From there, events multiplied: educational booths at beaches, fitness fundraisers, sunscreen giveaways and workshops in schools. Sophia and her team were there to relate, inspire and connect with their peers.
After Sophia started giving skin cancer prevention workshops — first to Girl Scout troops, then shelters, with donated products from a local med spa, it caught the attention of L’Oréal’s Sun Hero program dermatologist, Amy Brodsky, MD. Sophia and Dr. Brodsky launched an ongoing collaboration between L’Oréal and Project Save Our Skin to instill sun-safe habits in students across the country through the Sun Hero program.
But Sophia didn’t want to keep this to herself. “I was thinking, This is great for me to be doing,” she says, “but so many other university students and medical students who are passionate about skin cancer would love to be involved with it, too.” So she started recruiting and training volunteers, including medical students, post-grads, college students and high schoolers to give these talks. “Now it’s not just me anymore. Now it’s a whole team of students, at all different levels, who are passionate about skin cancer prevention.”
Today, chapters operate in Michigan, Chicago, New Jersey and Iowa, with more than 50 students involved and growth in sight. What started as a single advocacy project quickly multiplied its impact through a wide network of passionate young leaders.
Why Youth-Led Education Works
Sophia’s seen it firsthand. When kids hear about skin cancer from other students and not adults, the message lands differently. During presentations, students often pull sunscreen out of their backpacks to apply it on the spot. As they were surprised to learn that sunscreen is necessary even during winter or on cloudy days, kids rushed up to her after her talk, clutching sunscreen samples saying, “My mom doesn’t know this. I’m going to tell her tonight!”
That ripple effect of children teaching their parents is exactly why Sophia believes youth-led education works: “The youth are now at a place where we’re inspiring the older generations.” Sophia also shared how incredible it felt to hear that her collaboration with Dr. Brodsky helped to reignite the busy dermatologist’s passion for advocacy. This is the kind of cross-generational impact that happens when young leaders are given a platform.
Using Pageants for Purpose
At the Miss Teen USA competition in October 2025, Sophia was able to share her skin cancer advocacy on a larger platform. “Even though I didn’t bring home the crown, I was able to get that message on a bigger page. I’m so grateful for that. It was an experience I’ll remember forever.”
She still notices a lack of awareness of skin health in the pageantry space. When she’s onstage and tells the judges that one in five Americans will get skin cancer, she makes it real for them, immediately noticing their stunned reaction: “If there’s five people in the room, I say it’s going to be one of us statistically.”
Sophia understands the pageant system and uses it strategically. She humbly admits, “I’ve found that people really listen when I have a crown and sash on, even though I’ve said the exact same things with or without.” She hopes to compete for Miss USA in a few years, when she’s ready. With just the teen crown for Illinois, she’s already made an impact across the state, connecting with members of Congress and building relationships that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise. “I can only imagine with a national title the sheer impact that would be made for skin cancer prevention,” she says.
Beyond the Crown
Among the research work, the pageants and her advocacy work, Sophia also boxes to relieve stress, is a certified Mat Pilates instructor and is leading a chapter of Simply from the Heart at Michigan, a volunteer group that does makeup for hospital patients.
So how does she balance it all? Her answer is simple: “When you truly love everything you’re doing, time flies by.” Sophia calls herself “multidimensional” and understands that it’s difficult for young women to find their purpose in a society that so often groups them into boxes. If you’re smart and pursuing a difficult major, you can’t possibly be interested in fashion and pageants. If you’re a beautiful girl competing in pageants, they assume you’re not serious academically. After Sophia started competing, classmates treated her differently, asking if she was sure about her exam scores and offering condescending help.
“I want to erase all of those perceptions,” she says. “Lead by example, showing girls that if I’m able to balance everything I’m passionate about, then they are too.” Sophia is dismantling the idea that girls have to choose between their passion, their intelligence or their ambitions, and that they have the right to exist without being reduced to a stereotype.
The Future
Sophia wants to see a chapter of Project Save Our Skin in every state, and to compete in Miss USA. She’s going to use that crown to amplify her message even further. The pageant world needs leaders like Sophia, and the world of youth health awareness needs the platform that pageantry can provide.
She’s leveraging both angles to redefine what leadership looks like and building two movements simultaneously: empowering the next generation to protect their skin, and showing young women they don’t have to be limited to just one quality. They can show up as their whole, complex selves. “So many people are passionate about this,” Sophia says. “We need to feed off of that energy. All hands need to be on deck.”
Melanie Hertgen is development coordinator for The Skin Cancer Foundation. She says this story inspired her to build even stronger connections with young advocates across the country, amplifying the voices of those fighting for a sun-safe future.
