From posting daily dancing videos on Musical.ly as a teenager to becoming Miss Culver City at 21 years old, Sharlize True Trujillo has continued to achieve her goals.

Trujillo, a third-year gender studies student, won the title Miss Culver City in a pageant under the Miss America organization in February. Beyond the pageant, Trujillo is an influencer, dancer and actress who owns a clothing brand and is the co-founder of TrueWrld Media, a social media agency that she created with her family.

Shariah True, Sharlize’s older sister, said that Sharlize found out about the pageant January and began researching how to enter and train for the competition.

“She’s driven because she wants to pay her own school tuition,” said Shelly Trujillo, Sharlize’s mother. “The America (Miss America) system has a great scholarship program besides everything else that she’s learning from the program.”

Sharlize said she is the first person in her family to go to college. According to the Miss America website, the organization aims to help women pursue higher education.

Shariah said Sharlize – who is five years younger than she is – has been her best friend since childhood. Shariah added that her sister has always been very mature and wise.

Starting at a young age, Sharlize was an aspiring Olympic figure skater who learned early on to chase her dreams, Shelly added.

“She is literally sunshine. Think of the color yellow, and that’s who she is,” Shariah said. “She brightens up the room, she makes everyone laugh, she giggles at everything and she’s so loved because she’s such a bright light.”

The pageant has several portions, each weighted as a part of the overall score: evening gown, fitness, talent, onstage questions and the 10 minute interview. The onstage questions are posed by a panel with a 30 second response time. The 10 minute interview is the highest weighted portion, worth 30% of the overall score.

Having grown up dancing, Sharlize said she had the most experience in the dancing portion of the pageant and is performing Elton John’s “Bennie and the Jets” on the stage, where she will incorporate a mixture of ballet, contemporary and hip hop dance.

Sharlize said the scariest part of the pageant was the 10 minute interview, where the judges asked her to share her perspectives on political topics including transgender athletes competing in the Olympics, banning TikTok, abortion laws and the #MeToo movement.

“I never thought I would go into pageants, but it’s super empowering,” Sharlize said. “It’s honestly made me dial in on what my goals are and what do I want to accomplish in the future.”

As Miss Culver City, Sharlize said she continues to work with Girl Well, a community service organization based in Los Angeles that distributes self-care kits and hygienic products to young women. Sharlize helps the organization host charity events and parades, she added.

Sharlize said she also runs the Miss Culver City Instagram account, where she hopes to spread positivity among young women by posting empowering content. She posts lifestyle, dancing and acting content on her social media and has a combined 5 million followers.

Sharlize said she hopes to use her degree to join the entertainment industry, where she hopes to expand the kind of roles young girls have access to.

“I feel her life has been this huge accomplishment, but the biggest piece was getting accepted into UCLA because nobody thought she was going to do it,” Shelly said.

Between school and social media, Sharlize said she also works full time in artist development with film and television producer Simon Fuller. As someone minoring in film and screenwriting at UCLA, Sharlize added that she is especially interested in learning about how different identities, specifically women, are represented on screen.

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Now in the preparation phase for Miss California, she said she would happily go through the whole process again.

“It really made me realize how much community means to people,” she said. “That’s all I want to do – is help people and give back and just be positive because I know growing up, I would have loved to have someone like that.”