A beauty pageant contestant onstage, a researcher in transnational repression offstage.
Cynthia Sun, senior researcher at the Falun Dafa Information Center and Miss NTD 2023, explains on EpochTV’s “Bay Area Innovators” program how she bridges human rights advocacy, national security research, and traditional values.
Raised in Texas, Sun started work in human rights and foreign policy at the Falun Dafa Information Center right after college. Despite being 5 feet 10 inches, she was never interested in participating in beauty pageants, as she felt they seemed superficial and perpetuated unhealthy stereotypes of young women.
So the Miss NTD beauty pageant intrigued her because she realized the first thing she saw was actually inner beauty, and wondered how that is scored. The application consisted of describing your family environment, naming your top three role models, and listing the top three traits you would want to develop as a woman….