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It’s not often that a beauty queen visits Franklin High School. well, it never happens.
Until march 19, when Jabili Kandula, Miss New Jersey USA 2024, spent about an hour with members of the FHS aviation club.
In addition to being Miss NJ USA – whose reign ends in April – Kandula is also a certified pilot, having earned her pilot’s license about five years ago.
That was the primary reason for her visit to the high school, but the students were just as interested in her pageant life as her aviation story.
Kandula, who is 24, said she idolized the aviatrix Emilia Earhart as a young girl.
“Amelia Earhart was my inspiration growing up,” she said. “I used to read books about her all the time, and one day I decided why don’t I just become like her? So I asked my parents to take me to a flight school and I started learning how to fly when I was 19 years old.”
Well, maybe asked is putting it lightly, as she later recounted to the students.
“I found all the flying schools in my area, how many hours I would need, how much it would cost, what resources I would need, and took this research and gave it to my parents, and I said, either you guys are going to support me or I’m going to find a way myself,” she said. “And I think that really shook them that I was so invested in this and I wanted it so badly that they were like, we’ll help you find a way as long as you get your degree.”
“I wanted to be an airline pilot at the time, and I thought that was the only career I could get in aviation, so I kept working towards it,” she told the students. “I worked on my instrument rating, and then things slowed down. Life kind of got in the way, and I knew I had to focus a little bit more on my college degree.”
Kandula initially entered Rutgers University thinking she was going to major in business, but soon found that it was not for her.
Instead, she took her love for reading and writing and turned that into a degree in Journalism and Media Studies.
Her attendance at a Women in Aviation conference her senior year resulted in her getting a job offer from Aviation for Women magazine, she said. She became the magazine’s associate editor, giving her the chance to marry her two passions: writing and flying.
“I took this job, and it was absolutely incredible, because now I’m learning about all these other careers in aviation; not just pilots, astronauts, and flight attendants, there’s also engineers, there’s aviation attorneys, people in business, all these careers that we don’t really think about in aviation, but this is a multi-billion dollar industry, it’s a whole world in itself,” she said. “A personal trainer for pilots, we don’t even think about that.”
“So there really is a space for everyone, which is absolutely incredible, and I had the opportunity to interview so many people, write about so many people, go to so many conferences and air shows, and see what was out there, and share those stories with the rest of the world,” she said.
By the time Kandula was earning to fly, she’d already had several attempts at a pageant title.
She said seeing a Native American become first runner-up gave her the impetus to compete.
“I felt like, why can’t it be me?” she said.
She competed in the Miss New Jersey Teen USA pageant until she aged out at 19 and had to compete in the Miss NJ USA pageant, she said.
“I was 19 years old competing in the Miss,” she said. “There were 25-year-olds, there were 27-year-olds. There were girls that were doctors and lawyers. They were already so established in their career, and I’m just this 19-year-old baby there.”
“What am I doing here with all these women?” she said. “I didn’t place. It was so heartbroken, but at the same time, I had made so many friends that were much older than me, and they were learning so much about all these different people.”
“That was the biggest thing to me, was that I was constantly learning about new things. So I came back, competed again, didn’t even place again, but again, this time I was like, I had fun. You know what? I felt good. And then I said, all right, let me try again.”
This time she hired a coach, Kandula said, resulting in her placing in the next competition.
The next year, she placed in the semi-finals, but did not make it to the top five finishers.”
She decided to give it one more go in 2024, Kandula said, and ended up walking away with the title.
Sarah Montanari, the aviation club advisor, said she wanted to bring Kandula in to show students that they “don’t have to put themselves in a box.”
“If they want to be something, they can pursue other passions,” she said. “And for aviation students, I think it’s a great opportunity for them to see just what other different opportunities there are in aviation. Different ways of pursuing aviation.”
Montanari said she got the idea to bring her in after reading an article about her.
“I saw that Miss New Jersey is a private pilot, and I said, well, we have to have her, right?” she said. “I mean, come on, this is a perfect opportunity to have somebody come and speak to our students.”
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