This story is part of our March 2026 issue. To read the print version, click here.
Kennedy Hill-Garcia
Government relations consultant, Kaiser Permanente
Founder, REIGNWell Institute
Look up Kennedy Hill-Garcia online, and she is wearing a tiara in one of the first images that appears, wrapped in a sash that reads “Mrs. California International.” That 2023 win was her seventh pageant title, Hill-Garcia clarifies, going back to her first reluctant run as a 15-year-old high school senior battling a rare cancer.
Growing up in Vacaville, Hill-Garcia was an ambitious student and athlete. She moved up two grades in school and played softball and volleyball in addition to competing in gymnastics and on the speech and debate team. But when treatment for acute myelogenous leukemia forced her to miss her senior sports season, her counselor recommended that she try pageants to keep herself occupied.
“At first I thought, absolutely not. I’m an athlete,” says Hill-Garcia, who is now a government relations consultant at Kaiser Permanente. “I’m not going to go and walk on a stage and just be cute.” But she became the first girl of color to win Miss Vacaville, then went on to win Miss Solano County Teen and compete for Miss California Teen.
After graduating high school at 16, Hill-Garcia earned a bachelor’s degree in computer science and chemical engineering at UC Davis and a graduate degree at Stanford with an emphasis on engineering leadership and project management. One of her first jobs after college was at the software company Remedy Corporation in Pleasanton, where she says she was the first Black female developer. She worked primarily with health care companies at Remedy, which helped build her resume for her move to Kaiser Permanente in 2005, also the year she married her husband, Gabriel. Though her pageant career was relatively short, she always remembered how that world had helped her when she needed it.
Those memories came back after she went through a major loss. At 57, her father — a former professional baseball player then recently retired from the CHP — was killed in a car accident while driving to Arizona to see his godson play in a spring training game. Hill-Garcia, who describes herself and her father as being “as close as the peanut butter and jelly that come in the same jar,” went through a period of deep grief after his death.
But she kept active, starting a college coaching program in 2010. Her focus was on prospective first-generation college students who often need help understanding the intricacies of college choice and applications. “I got Kaiser to donate laptops, and I set up 10 laptops on my kitchen table,” she says. “The first meeting I had 12 kids, and so they had to take turns.” From those first 12 participants, the program grew to serve hundreds of students with scholarships, college tours and coaching, becoming the registered nonprofit The Dream Academy in 2017.
One of the girls she was mentoring wanted to join a pageant but said she was too nervous to do it alone. Knowing Hill-Garcia had competed in her teens, she asked her to try out for the Mrs. division — a category for married women. She joined at the girl’s insistence and rediscovered the support and camaraderie she remembered, which she says helped finally lift her depression.
“I know people don’t understand the power of pageantry, but I just remembered that the first time I ever did a pageant was another time that was difficult in my life,” she says. “I had something stripped away from me that I really, really missed. Pageantry was the thing that helped me get through it.”
“I know people don’t understand the power of pageantry, but I just remembered that the first time I ever did a pageant was another time that was difficult in my life. … Pageantry was the thing that helped me get through it.”
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Hill-Garcia started putting coaching material online and on an app so that it would be accessible to students at home. Building on this progress, she created the REIGNWell Institute in 2025, which offers leadership training and pageant coaching for women and girls. Hill-Garcia says the fees she charges for courses go back into a scholarship fund. Girls around the country apply for scholarships with essays and a record of their grades, and the funds are split between the qualified applicants, ranging from $250 to $2,500 per year for four years.
After mentoring hundreds of young people, Hill-Garcia says her phone is a constant feed of current and former mentees announcing their accomplishments, from acing exams to getting into law school. These messages often make her cry. “It’s something that I know they dreamt of,” she says. “We’ve worked really hard to make it happen, and when it comes true for them, it is the best reward that anyone could give me.”
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View the list of honorees from 2015 through 2026.
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