Taylor Lee is not exactly a typical beauty contestant candidate. Yes, the 24-year-old former model is tall, thin and attractive, but she’s also Black, gay and a computer geek who’s passionate about STEM.
The Montclair resident’s life has taken some surprising turns to bring her to her passion, which she has turned into a business that does grant-writing and STEM research for small businesses. It’s also the reason she’s competing in the Miss New Jersey contest next week, to be a role model for young people and preach the gospel of science, technology, engineering and math.
In the fall of 2015, just a couple of weeks into her senior year at Montclair High School, Lee was knocked over while standing on a lacrosse field during gym class by a 200-pound male classmate who was playing flag football on an adjacent field. She suffered a concussion, dislocated jaw and hip, and a back injury. She spent the rest of her senior year home-schooled, in and out of a wheelchair and spine specialists’ offices.
“It was completely devastating,” she said, adding that she missed many milestones, including taking the SAT. Though she’d been an A-student, after the accident, college was “not on my mind at all,” she said. “All I was planning on was getting my health back and how the heck to make it through senior year.”
Another deep disappointment was having to cancel an appointment to sign a modeling contract with Red Model Management. She’d been building her portfolio as a runway model at New York’s Fashion Week every year since 2012.
Then, her mother was forced to quit her job as an insurance agent to care for her daughter; medical bills started piling up, and “we were on the verge of being evicted from our apartment,” Lee said.
A silver lining turns into a passion
But her illness had a silver lining. Over the course of many trips to the CVS drug store near her Sherman Avenue home, she became friendly with a pharmacist named Mina Khouzam and began picking his brain for alternatives to her anti-inflammatory medicines.
She’d been losing weight (loss of appetite is a side effect of ibuprofen and naproxen) and her 5-foot-6-inch frame dwindled to 90 pounds.
One of his suggestions was turmeric, a spice, which she found “amazing” for inflammation.
Increasingly fascinated by pharmaceutical science, and bored at home, she asked Khouzam if there might be a position for her at the pharmacy. He spoke to his boss, and before she’d left the store she’d been hired as an assistant, on “light duty” so she could continue to heal.
“I was completely ecstatic,” she said. “The job helped me get more confidence and understand the medical and health care systems. It also taught me how I could use natural alternatives with the same benefit as drugs for better results and no side effects.”
GIRLS SKATE:Inclusive skate sessions in Montclair
Carving out her own path
Around…
Read More: Miss New Jersey contestant is black, gay and a STEM lover