Brookdale Graduate Jade Glab Crowned Miss New Jersey

“Brookdale gave me the opportunity to not only figure out what I wanted to do but I also was able to have a schedule that was built around students having other obligations besides just school,” Jade Glab, who was just named Miss New Jersey, said about her experience at Brookdale. While a specific date or time is not yet announced, Glab will be representing New Jersey in the upcoming Miss America pageant.

Glab graduated from Brookdale Community College with a 4.0 GPA in May with an AS in Business Administration. “I had a great time at Brookdale and I’m so grateful for all the opportunities it gave me,” she said. Glab was a member of Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society, the New Jersey Collegiate Business Administration Association Honor Society, and the honors program all while being a local title holder in the Miss New Jersey contest.

Prior to being crowned Miss New Jersey, Glab, a Belmar resident, was Miss Central Jersey Beaches. “For me, being a local title holder was a job, an obligation, and I had a lot of work to do with that,” she said. Glab explained she was an ambassador for local Children’s Miracle Network hospitals and worked to promote her social impact initiative. Because she was able to schedule her classes around her other obligations, she said Brookdale “really allowed me to make the most out of my experience in the Miss America organization.”

“Healthy Children, Strong America” is Glab’s social impact initiative. “The inspiration for this started when I was 11 years old and I was told that I had high cholesterol,” she said. Glab was told she needed to change her lifestyle or be put on medication. “Your health doesn’t wait for you to grow up and become educated,” so her initiative focuses on teaching children to form healthy habits from a young age. Glab visits elementary and middle schools and begins her presentation by reading the students The Berenstain Bears and Too Much Junk Food by Stan and Jan Berenstain. She then plays a grocery shopping game with the children where they learn what is considered healthy food and what is considered junk food or processed food. She finishes the presentation by doing a craft that also teaches kids the importance of choosing healthy foods. “You have to be fun because when you are working with kids, you need to do something that is fun for them,” she said of her social impact initiative of teaching children to make healthy food choices. “This way they can take control of their health before it takes control of them.”

“The Miss America Organization is so multifaceted and it has allowed me to pursue my interests with my social impact initiative where I would not have had a place to promote it had it not been for the Miss America Organization,” Glab said. She explained she was also able to use what she was learning in her classes at Brookdale to help with her social impact initiative and other aspects of her journey to Miss New Jersey. “It taught me so much about the world and it made me more interested in current events,” she said of the Introduction to Sociology class she took at Brookdale with professor Joseph Boyle. She said most of the comments she received on her interview portion of the competition noted her response was more of a whole world view. “That class really helped me to conceptualize a lot of current issues that are happening today and how they relate to our history.”

“This coming year, I am going to have to take a year off of school,” Glab explained. In addition to promoting her social impact initiative, Glab will also have a copious amount of appearances to make. She noted appearances in south Jersey, New Brunswick, Freehold, and Atlantic City on four consecutive days. “It is a full-time job in addition to preparing for Miss America, so there is no way I would be able to attend school for the upcoming year,” she said.

However, Glab does still plan on continuing her education at the University of Virginia McIntire School of Commerce as a finance major after taking the year off. She hopes to work for a consulting firm after earning her bachelor’s degree “to be able to get more experience and understand how the business world works before opening my own business.” Her ultimate career goal is to create a healthy fast food drive through. “I want to make healthy food affordable and accessible in this busy, modern lifestyle,” she said.

Photo captions:

1. Jade Glab being crowned Miss New Jersey
2. Jade Glab with Suzanne Rauso, Student Success Coach, before Brookdale’s morning commencement ceremony on May 16.