Miss Florida 2026 speaks to Rotary Club of Sarasota

On Sept. 6, the winner of the Miss America contest will be chosen from among 52 women. 

Miss Florida 2026, Alexandra de Roos, has a chance for the crown. Yet, even with the contest near, she was still performing community outreach on Aug. 12, serving as the speaker at the Rotary Club of Sarasota's meeting at Marina Jack. 

DeRoos, 23, is the youngest member of the speakers bureau of the Brain Injury Association of America, and frequently travels to share her story of resilience amid a traumatic brain injury. 

She is also the current Miss Manatee County.

“I love to share with people the experience that I went through, in the hopes that if they do have a brain injury, that they would be able to get the appropriate help and care that they need, but then also, if they don't have a brain injury, just to understand that they can overcome the most challenging obstacles that they face in their life," she said. "And so I hope to share my story as that message of resilience and inspiration."

De Roos started dancing at the age of 2 following a doctor's recommendation. She was born with hip dysplasia, a condition that results in a hip joint that is loose or prone to dislocation. 

She went on to train at Next Generation Ballet's summer intensive during middle school before attending the School of American Ballet, the official feeder school for the New York City Ballet. There, she was chosen for the extremely selective winter term program at 14.

But in 2021, as an 18-year-old student at Columbia University in New York, she had what she describes as a "freak accident" that changed the trajectory of her life.

After shutting the door of her dorm room against the left side of her head, she damaged the frontal lobe and Broca's area of her brain. She was told she had to stop dancing indefinitely if she wanted to have a chance at healing. 

"With those words, everything that I had worked so hard for, from since the age of 2 and a half, completely ended," she said. 

However, she said it was not until age 19 that a sports medicine physician offered her the information she needed to begin the rehabilitation process. 

She was in what she described as "a really dark place" prior to that, having developed depression in addition to her injury symptoms. She noted she was among the half of people with a traumatic brain injury that also experience mental health challenges.

"I would completely mix up my words when I was typing," she said. "I could hardly order my Starbucks order because I couldn't remember what it was. I could barely have a conversation with people without kind of stuttering my way through it because I couldn't get the word mapping skills down."

Then her mother insisted she participate in a local competition, something she said she thought was "absolutely bonkers." De Roos ended up winning the competition and being crowned Miss Emerald Coast of 2022.

Photo by Ian Swaby

She said returning to Miss Florida has been meaningful. 

She has long been involved with the organization, having been a sunshine princess in the organization's Florida Sunshine Mentoring Program, and being mentored by Miss Florida 2018 while competing as a teen title holder. 

She said that, although she lived in New York for five years, she was "super honored" to represent Florida, the state she considers her home and is where her family live. 

“All the Miss Floridas really embodied all of the qualities that I hoped to possess as I became older, and so I knew that I wanted to participate in this organization,” she said. 

De Roos is currently attending the University of South Florida, majoring in psychology with a pre-medical focus. She is founder of the nonprofit The Blue Project: Integrating Neuroscience and the Arts, Inc., which focuses on the arts as a method for neurological healing.

Some of her other activities include serving on Florida's Brain Injury Advisory Board, where she worked to help develop and implement the Brain Injury State Action Plan, and serving as director of philanthropy for Alpha Delta Pi at USF.

"I’ve learned to define myself by the qualities and characteristics that I possess, and not by my accomplishments, which is also the way that I approach meeting with other individuals as well, and something that I share as Miss Florida is just to really focus on who you are as a person, and then the accomplishments will come thereafter," she said.