You may remember her as the Miss America beauty pageant contestant famous for wearing an insulin pump on national TV during the swimsuit competition, but fellow type 1 Sierra Sandison is so much more than that.
The Idaho-based 20-something is now finishing her degree in mechanical and biomedical engineering and has been a force behind diabetes advocacy lobbying to lower insulin pricing in the United States.
Years after her 2014 Miss America run, she recently put her name back into the beauty pageant arena with the aim of empowering women who might want to enter the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM).
We talked with Sierra recently about all that she’s accomplishing these days, and where her advocacy is leading.

Diagnosed with type 1 diabetes (T1D) at age 18, Sandison struggled at first and even pretended she didn’t have it in hopes that “it…