Susanna Shedd ’27, a Westover Honors Fellow and Bonner Leader at the University of Lynchburg, will compete next week in the 2024 Miss Virginia pageant. The biomedical science major from Chesapeake, Virginia, earned a spot in the competition when she was crowned Miss Lynchburg in March.

The finals for Miss Virginia will be held on Saturday, June 29, at the Berglund Center in Roanoke, Virginia. If Shedd qualifies for the finals and wins, she will compete for Miss America next January in Orlando, Florida.

This is the first time Shedd has vied for Miss Virginia and the fifth time she has competed at the statewide level in a pageant associated with the Miss America scholarship organization.

Last year, she was second runner-up in Miss Virginia’s Teen, representing the Shenandoah Valley. In previous years, she also represented Virginia Beach, Hanover, and Chesapeake in the teen pageant.

Shedd also was Miss Grassfield at Grassfield High School, in Chesapeake, Virginia. She graduated from Grassfield in 2023.

For the talent portion of Miss Virginia, Shedd will perform a classical piece on the cello, accompanied by her sister Sophia on harp. Shedd has been playing the cello since she was 7 years old and started playing piano at age 4.

Her platform for the pageant is medical doctor emergency shortages — a problem she says worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic, when many physicians, nurses, and other health care workers left the medical field.

To combat shortages, she thinks middle and high schoolers should be more educated about opportunities in the medical industry.

“There are over 200 medical careers you can go into and not all require eight years of school,” Shedd said, adding that volunteering also can positively impact shortages in the health care field. “Anybody can be involved in medicine, even if it’s not your career.”

Shedd, whose plans include earning a Master of PA Medicine from Lynchburg, currently volunteers at the Free Clinic in downtown Lynchburg. The clinic is her service site for Lynchburg’s Bonner Leader program.

“University of Lynchburg has given me several wonderful opportunities, such as Campus Outreach, Westover Honors College, and the Bonner Leader Program,” she said. “I have thoroughly enjoyed the community those organizations have provided.

“Academically, I’m particularly grateful for the small school size and how it enables those one-on-one conversations with my professors. I generally get the feeling that my professors want me to succeed and that pushes me to work harder.”

As for her current endeavor — winning Miss Virginia — the preliminary competition begins on Monday, June 24. Shedd is one of 26 women, age 18-28, competing for the crown. Fifteen will advance to the finals on June 29.

“It’s complicated, because you’re competing against some girls who have been out of school for a couple of years now,” Shedd said in May. “I’m a 19-year-old competing against some girls who are 28 and have their doctorates.

“That’s the scariest part, the huge age gap, but it’s important to go in knowing who you are as a person and removing the barriers of comparison, because each of us has something individual to bring to the table and it doesn’t matter how old we are or how much education we have.”