LONGMEADOW  – Sydney Rachael Levin-Epstein sees entering the Miss Massachusetts competition for Miss America as a means to further her efforts to pursue public service.
    

The Longmeadow native – who is Miss Western Massachusetts – is set to compete at the state pageant at the Hanover Theater in Worcester on July 16 and 17.
    

She will be one of 23 contestants with several others from Western Massachusetts. The Miss America pageant will be conducted in December at Mohegan Sun casino in Connecticut and the winner will receive the title of Miss America 2022.
    

The 2020 Miss Massachusetts competition was cancelled because of the COVID-19 pandemic. According to pageant officials, this year’s field of 23 candidates will be narrowed to a Top 10 plus the People’s Choice candidate.  Supporters help select the People’s Choice position by voting online. Each vote is $1and counts as one vote. Online voting is live now and will end at 10 p.m. on July 16. For more details visit www.missmass.org and click on the online voting link.     
    

Gone are the days of the swimsuit competition from the 94th event – the organization itself is 100 this year.  According to the organization’s website, “Today, the Miss America Organization is a nationally recognized non-profit and serves as one of the largest providers of scholarship assistance to young women in the world. The mission to prepare great women for the world and prepare the world for great women comes to fruition through the thousands of young women across America working to better their communities through service and scholarship.”
    

Levin-Epstein sees achieving the title of Miss Massachusetts as “a year of service.” She added she would be “giving a lot to Miss America organization and its ability to empower young women and girls.”
    

She explained to Reminder Publishing each contestant must now prepare a social impact statement and in hers she wrote in part, “Rather than elevating one genre of public service over another, I will harness the public platform of Miss Massachusetts for a more inclusive and comprehensive media strategy that showcases organizations across the state that are making a difference to causes ranging from addressing systemic forms of oppression to combatting food insecurity to finding solutions to health disparity. As Miss Western Massachusetts, I have already started this work by partnering with organizations including The Boys and Girls Club, Learning It Together, Girls Inc., Feeding America, Planet Aid, National Breast Cancer Foundation, Baystate Children’s Hospital, and more.”
    

The talent part of the competition remains and Levin-Epstein is a long-time Irish step dancer. She recalled with a smile how she would go from Hebrew school to the John Boyle O’Reilly Club in Springfield for her step dancing lessons.
    

The daughter of Sheila Mulholland and Jonathan Levin-Epstein of Longmeadow, she is a 2013 graduate of Pioneer Valley Performing Arts Charter School and a 2017 graduate of The George Washington University where she majored in Political Science. Levin-Epstein is also a graduate of Springfield Technical Community College.
  

 Politics has played a major role in her life and career. She is the finance director for the Jewish Democratic Council of America, and has the national events director for the successful Jon Ossof for Senate campaign in Georgia. She also was the deputy finance director for Sen. Edward Markey. She has met with three presidents of the United States to date.
    

She also was an intern for Rep. Richard Neal and was the public relations assistant for the former president of Israel Shimon Peres.
    

Levin-Epstein plans to earn a Master’s degree in Public Policy and has her eyes on a run for Congress.
    

Although her career so far has brought her around the nation and overseas, Levin-Epstein said “I’m committed to my roots in Massachusetts.”