Miss Veteran America 2018: Empowering Veterans

We had the good fortune of sitting down and talking with one of the semi-finalists for Ms. Veteran America 2018. Bryanna Smith, a United States Army Drill Sergeant has defied all odds and become one of the 40 semi-finalists out of hundreds of nominees.

The Ms. Veteran America competition raises awareness and publicity for The Final Salute Inc. The Final Salute Inc. is an organization that works to house homeless female veterans and their children. On any given day there are over 55,000 homeless female veterans in this country. We're proud to know and offer support to Bryanna as a shining spokesperson for The Final Salute Inc.

Bryanna started her career in the Army as a Medical Laboratory Technician, eventually earning the massive responsibility of managing, distributing, and infectious disease testing of all blood support products for all coalition, native and U.S. forces in Afghanistan in 2014. During this time she was able to complete two undergraduate degrees and upon transitioning to the U.S. Army Reserves she started working as a Histologist. Couple that with the fact that she's a proud mother of a 2-year-old son and you've got one of the hardest working, most intelligent and beautiful women we've had the opportunity to interview at American Grit.

Obviously, her love of country is reflected in her exemplary military service, but one thing that will always get Bryanna is the National Anthem. She still gets tears in her eyes when she hears it played. The emotions are almost too complex to put into words.

"When I saw the reality of the horror of war, working in Afghanistan, it made me appreciate what we were doing there, trying to rid the world of that tyranny and understand how great we have it in the United States. We get the opportunity to live beside and learn about other cultures with relatively little danger. We truly are a melting pot.”

Join us as we support Bryanna Smith and her campaign to be crowned Ms. Veteran America 2018!

For more information on Final Salute Inc., you can visit their website here.

You can also help Bryanna raise money for them here.

Follow Bryanna on Facebook and Twitter!