Raising the Bar: Loyola Law Student Reigns as Miss Windy City

Allison Garcia wears many hats — she’s a second-year law student, research assistant, Community Equity Response Collaborative Fellow, competitor for Health Regulatory Compliance Team, editor-in-chief of Loyola’s Annals of Health Law and Life Science, secretary of the Sports and Entertainment Law Society and vice president of the Health Law Society. 

Now, she wears a crown, too.

The 28-year-old is Miss Windy City, a local preliminary title under the Miss Illinois Scholarship Organization awarded annually at the Miss Chicago Competition in January. Under the umbrella of the Miss America Opportunity, the pageant queen will vie for the statewide crown in her last year of competitive eligibility this June at the Miss Illinois Scholarship Competition. 

While she’s a self-proclaimed “West Coast gal,” growing up in Las Vegas and living in Los Angeles for three years post-graduation, the J.D. candidate said she’s found her “forever home” in the city she now represents. 

“My first time coming to Chicago was to visit Loyola,” Garcia said. “Walking around the campus, walking around the city, I was sad to leave and that’s when I just knew, ‘This is the place for me. This is where I’m gonna really grow.’ I truly feel like I’ve put my roots down here. I’ve grown so much. This community has welcomed me with open arms, and it’s just true happiness.”

Applying to 22 law schools in the 2024 admission cycle, Garcia said she was attracted to Loyola for its Beazley Institute for Health Law and Policy, which earned the university the No. 4 rank for health care law programs in the country.  

Nearly a decade of work — paid and unpaid — at her mother’s optometry office founded her interest in healthcare. 

While a distaste for blood and needles dissuaded her from becoming a doctor, she had a clear vision of law school in her future. Helping run her mom’s practice during the COVID-19 Pandemic as a then-fourth-year undergraduate student, Garcia said she found her rhythm in the business and legal aspects of healthcare. 

“I can combine law with health and help represent doctors, represent practices in business transactions and make sure that they’re compliant with different laws,” Garcia said. 

Her studies at Loyola, which she said examine the changing nature of public healthcare policy and lawyers’ abilities to shape it, piqued her curiosity about health equity — a state in which all people have just opportunities to achieve their highest level of health, according to the CDC.

Her chosen advocacy platform, called a Community Service Initiative (CSI) in Miss America competitions, reflects this newfound focus. Through “The Equity Prescription: Improving Fair Access to Healthcare,” Garcia spreads health equity awareness via digital content and community events that offer education tailored to specific age groups.

She hosts in-classroom handwashing seminars that help young children visualize germ transfer and grasp the importance of keeping hands clean. Using a clear gel that shines green in black light and Labubus, Garcia gets kids thinking about their health, which she said improves health equity in the long run. 

“With children, it’s hard to get them excited about expanding Medicaid,” Garcia said. “Kids don’t really care about insurance. They’re not thinking about it. But what they are thinking about is stuff that applies to them every single day, which will be health literacy, which for young kids is washing their hands.”

Garcia said she’s currently developing an insurance education plan for older youth groups as people aged 19 to 26 are often in a “weird limbo” with insurance status. 

“No one sits down and explains that to you,” Garcia said. “I’m creating an education workshop to explain to people, ‘What is health insurance? What is the marketplace? How do you purchase health insurance? What does it mean to have employer sponsored health insurance, which is just that you have health insurance through your employer? And then, how do you qualify for Medicaid?’”

Using her Miss Windy City platform to educate people about improving fair healthcare access is a natural blend of Garcia’s varied areas of expertise. 

“It’s honestly the coolest thing ever,” Garcia said. “If I wasn’t a lawyer, I would be a teacher in a heartbeat. And so I kind of get to combine all my passions together with this of being a lawyer, passionate about health law and teaching others, which is all under my sparkly hat.”

Garcia’s additional passions include scrapbooking, crosswords, puzzling and playing piano — the talent she’s competed with since her first pageant at 8 years old. 

Garcia makes the time to practice everyday at a keyboard or in a free practice room at the Harold Washington Library, a feat given the amount of responsibilities she juggles daily. 

In her time as both Miss Windy City and a law student, she said she’s learned the importance of leaning on her community as she manages a full schedule.

“Sometimes you feel weak asking for help,” Garcia said. “You feel like, ‘Oh, I should be able to do this on my own.’ But we’re all doing this life for the first time. It’s okay to fail, and it’s okay to lean on others. And I would not be here today if I did not lean on others. I would be, like, crashed and burned in a dumpster fire somewhere.”

Julia Humenny, a second-year law student and president of the Health Law Society, is one such collaborator of Garcia’s, the two meeting when appointed to the group’s executive board.

“It was a very easy transition from strangers to both friends and coworkers,” Humenny said. “Primarily, she’s incredibly kind, but she’s also very organized and she’s very driven, so she’s a fabulous teammate in addition to being a fabulous person.”

Humenny said she initially had “absolutely no idea” that Garcia came from a pageant background and was shocked to find out she’d be competing for Miss Windy City. 

“My only knowledge about pageantry was ‘Miss Congeniality,’” Humenny said. “So to see the amount of extra work in the community that she actually does and how deeply she truly cares about it was really eye-opening for me.”

Acknowledging common conceptions of pageant competitors as “ditsy” and “self-centered,” Garcia said she shied away from revealing this part of her life in her first year of law school.

She said she was pleasantly surprised, then, by the way the Loyola community embraced her pageant lifestyle once she announced her win. As many people responded saying they’d never met a pageant competitor before, Garcia’s work fights against misrepresentations of competitors. 

“She’s not just a pageant girl that wears a crown on her head and just looks pretty,” Executive Director of the Miss Chicago Organization Leah Gillan said. “She’s going to work, she’s getting into school, she’s doing community events, getting in with underprivileged communities and underserved communities.”

Gillan said she questions whether Garcia has more hours in the week than the average person, calling her resilience and drive “inspiring to me, as not even just a title holder, but just as a young woman.”

Whether she’s answering a cold call in class or facing an interview panel on stage, Garcia’s well-versed in advocating for what she believes in. 

Pageant training and studying often overlap, Garcia said, allowing her to find success in both areas simultaneously. Between mock panel interviews, community outreach and piano practice, she also writes down standout phrases her professors say in a “Pageant Phrases” notebook and delivers oral arguments, equipping herself for the challenges ahead.

With the Miss Illinois Competition in June and her Bar Exam looming in 2027, Garcia said she’s aiming to center herself in the next year. 

“I’ve found myself saying, ‘What does Allison want to do?,’” Garcia said. Like, what do I want to do rather than ‘Oh, what has this girl done and let me replicate that?’ It’s more like, ‘No, how am I going to have fun with this? What do I want to really gain?’”

While winning a trophy in her first pageant hooked her, 20 years of experience has given her a new perspective on the competitions.

“At the end of the day, if [they] don’t choose me as the winner, I know what I’ve done in my community and how it’s shaped me, and it has left an impact that no one’s gonna be able to take away,” Garcia said. “So win or lose, I’m still a winner at the end of the day.”