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The 21-year-old was crowned Miss Utah on October 27, 2012, at the Val A. Browning Center for the Performing Arts in Ogden, Utah. She’s the daughter of Jim and Shannon Powell of Salt Lake City. After the birth of her younger sister, her parents adopted a son, who has both congenital adrenal hyperplasia, which forces the body to age at an accelerated rate, and an inoperable brain tumor in his hypothalamus.
According to Powell’s bio, she is an aspiring singer who has performed with her group, Geniveve, all over Utah. She also sang the national anthem in front of an estimated 10,000 people at the Rocky Mountain Cup for the American soccer club Real Salt Lake. And Powell, along with her sister, was chosen to be one of the “children of light” during the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2002 Winter Olympic Games in her native state. She was also a standout volleyball player in high school and earned Deseret News First Team All-State 5A Defensive Special of the Year in 2009, in her senior year. She later played volleyball for Westminster College before transferring to Brigham Young University.
In addition to singing and athletics, Powell appeared on a news segment for local news affiliate ABC4 titled, “Testing Utahns: What Would You Do?” Powell played a glamorous shoplifter at a ski shop who went around plucking items off racks and soon discovered that other shoppers not only would fail to report her actions—presumably because she is so beautiful—but were even helping her steal. Powell has modeled for various publications, including Fitness magazine, and appeared in some commercials. She’s also big into community service, having volunteered for Primary Children’s Medical Center for the past five years and serving as an ambassador for the foundation Healing Hands for Haiti.

Powell, a stunning 5-foot-8 brunette sporting some serious diamond earrings, proceeded to unleash one of the most rambling, incoherent, brain-cell-killing responses in the history of the contest.
“I think we can re ... relate this back to education and how we are ... continuing to try to strive to ... [smiles] ... figure out how to create jobs, right now. That is the biggest problem in ... I think, especially the men, are, um ... seen as the leaders of this, and so we need to try to figure out how to ... create education better so that we can solve this problem.”
 
LAS VEGAS (AP) — Miss Utah Marissa Powell is the latest beauty queen to trip on national television, not over her gown, but during the interview segment.
Asked about income inequality at the Miss USA pageant in Las Vegas Sunday night, the 21-year-old Salt Lake City resident gave a rambling, awkwardly-worded answer that included several long pauses and the phrase "create education better."
The cringe-inducing response was getting lots of buzz Monday. As a video of the episode racked up hundreds of thousands of views, pageant co-owner Donald Trump scolded the haters on Twitter, saying anyone can lose their train of thought.
The question was a bit of a head scratcher itself.
 


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