On July 14th, 2012, at Talking Stick Resort & Casino the new Miss Arab USA was crowned. Suzanne Ziad Aslam from Scottsdale, Arizona was crowned as the new Miss Arab USA 2012. This year’s event was a huge success. It was a close competition this year but she proved to be the above the rest.
Suzanne Ziad Aslam, a 26 year old St. Louis native living in Scottsdale, Arizona, is the eldest of four children born to Palestinian immigrants John and Miriam Yatim. Suzanne holds a Bachelors degree in International Human Rights with a minor in Spanish from Webster University where she was the Vice President of the University’s ONE Campaign. As part of the ONE Campaign Suzanne was flown to Washington DC for the Power 100 Summit in which the top 100 young adult leaders Nationwide were trained in grassroots movements.
While in St. Louis Suzanne worked for an organization called Progressive Youth Connection that taught violence prevention and anti-bullying. In College Suzanne founded and presided over The Global Classroom Club, an extra-curricular class in which students would choose a region in the world to study in-depth, absorbing everything about the culture from the food, language and history. The class would then visit the target country in order to emerge themselves in the environment of study.
Suzanne has also been very heavily involved as a volunteer and advocate for the international non-profit Invisible Children. Although she will always be dedicated to her volunteer and advocacy work Suzanne is equally as passionate about her acting. Her already impressive list of film projects continues to grow as she remains very active in the independent film community. She’s an award winning filmmaker (her most recent film “Shift” won “Best Suspense Short” at the Indie Gathering Film Festival) and she continues to write, produce and act in independent films in Phoenix.
She is grateful and excited for the opportunity to serve her community, showcase her heritage and represent Arab-American women nationwide. Suzanne can’t wait to embark on her journey as the new Miss Arab USA.
To learn more about The Miss Arab USA Pageant visit http://MissArab.Org
