She believes that this custom approach, opposed to providing a one-size-fits-all method, is what leads to ultimate lasting success.
Therefore, in her one-on-one sessions, she focuses on teaching girls how to be the best versions of themselves from the inside out. Her goal is always to help the girls succeed in all areas of life, not just pageantry and modeling.
This role requires Maria to host sponsored activities and interviews in Rupp Arena full of 24,000 fans during home games! She is also now often hired to do how-to videos for companies like Aristry Skincare in NYC, Remington curling irons, various local commercials (like Bob Allen Motormall, Kentucky Branded, and more) around Kentucky.Īlthough she still models and hosts for a living, she is passionate about helping other girls with big dreams like her’s. Maria’s love for hosting continued to grow! As a lifelong UK fan, it was the biggest honor to be asked to be the current on-court host for University of Kentucky Men’s basketball games.
Her career exploded as she began regularly shooting for companies such as Nike, Express, Kohls, Pantene, Victoria’s Secret, Olay, Curel lotion, and so much more! She also started being spotted in TV appearances as she starred in a Tim McGraw music video (Truck Yeah!), a Josh Groban music video (Hidden Away), and was the trophy model handing out trophies on stage during the Country Music Awards on ABC. This brought her to live in Chicago for the summer, and Miami for the winter.
So during her junior year of college, she gained a contract with FORD Models, an agency she had admired for years. When she got home and finished her year as Miss Kentucky USA, she couldn’t let go of her original dream to model and knew the time was now or never. Maria placed in the top 5, which was quite the shock to her since she was the youngest contestant by far, and didn’t have any formal pageant training at the time. This lead to Maria competing against 50 other state titleholders for 2 1/2 weeks at Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas for the title of Miss USA, owned by Donald Trump and NBC. And lastly, in December of the same year, she was chosen for the coveted title of Miss Kentucky USA 2009. She was the first (and currently only) Boyle County representative to bring home the title of Miss Kentucky County Fair! Later in November, she also won the title of Miss Kentucky State Festivals. In January, this title took her to compete at Miss Kentucky County fair for the first time against 93 very competitive contestants in, each representing different counties of Kentucky. After several placements as 1st Runner up, she finally won her hometown title of Miss Boyle County Fair. So she started competing in pageants at the age of 15. Being from a small town in central Kentucky, she knew that pageants were the best way to get close to those dreams. Maria always had big dreams to model since the age of 5.