NEED TO KNOW
- Thom Brodeur was named CEO of the Miss USA group — which oversees each Miss USA and Miss Teen USA pageants — in September 2025
- Through the years, Brodeur has made his identify within the pageantry world as a former coach, choose and efficiency knowledgeable
- He first entered a male pageant within the ’90s, when he ran out of scholarship funds throughout his junior yr of faculty
Thom Brodeur was launched to the world of pageantry many years earlier than he would develop into the CEO of the Miss USA group.
In truth, his first introduction to the system occurred when a pal from highschool competed in Miss Teen USA, a contest he now owns together with its older sister pageant, Miss USA. It was the identical yr that Halle Berry received her state pageant in Ohio, he notes.
“I actually rapidly acknowledged how transformative [pageants] are,” he tells ipromiseyoumedia. “You would type of begin to see how life would evolve and alter for them.”
But it surely wasn’t till his personal foray onto the stage in 1991 that Brodeur personally skilled that impact. He was in faculty on a five-year commencement monitor, however halfway via his junior yr, Brodeur realized he had no scholarship cash left to fund the remainder of his schooling.
“There have been no extra grants out there to me as a result of I might maxed out,” he remembers years later. He was taking a look at a $10,500 invoice with completely no approach of paying it off and no room for any extra scholar loans.
“I used to be form of at a lifeless finish by way of what may I get executed,” says Brodeur. “Then, I used to be instructed by a household pal a few competitors, a male scholarship competitors.”
It was a totally international idea to Brodeur on the time: a magnificence pageant for males. Nevertheless, together with his choices being so restricted, he determined there was no motive he should not give it a shot, and he entered on the state stage.
That leap of religion secured him a stable $500, sufficient to pay for books and different essential college provides. It wasn’t sufficient, however it ignited a hearth in him that finally proved to be adequate. He took his rookie pageantry expertise all the way in which to nationals, secured himself a $10,000 scholarship and completed faculty.
“Again within the early ’90s, I used to be like, ‘Thank God for this,'” Brodeur notes. “Actually, I do not imply this in any type of false humility form of approach, I do not know the way I’d’ve afforded college. I actually do not know.”
He felt the urge to show his gratitude for pageants into one thing others may know as properly. If that faculty schooling may afford him the skilled success Brodeur searched for himself, he vowed to pay it ahead.
“I personally had a really transformational and transformative second in my very own life from this trade,” he shares. ” I made a promise then that if I may try this at scale, I’d. And right here we’re.”
Brodeur spent 30 years constructing what he describes as a “outstanding profession in client expertise and e-commerce,” working with corporations like GoDaddy and Digital Air Strike and Energy and Market Wire and others. Naturally, pageantry remained in his periphery, although. He watched his highest pal, the late Chelsi Smith, win a sequence of coveted titles: Miss Texas USA, Miss USA and Miss Universe.
“I used to be a bit even tougher by this bug,” he displays, and that sentiment exhibits in his prolific resume as a pageant coach, choose and even director for organizations aside from Miss USA. Years in the past, he was the top of a number of states in a two-country group for the Miss World pageant
“I’ve judged 180 native, state, nationwide, and worldwide pageants over the past 30 years. I’ve coached — I am unable to even inform you — 1000’s of ladies world wide who, whatever the system, whether or not Miss USA, Miss Universe, America World, World America. You identify it, I’ve coached for it,” Brodeur says.
“I’ve realized actually the insides and the outs and the upsides and the downsides of how the trade works,” he provides.
But it surely’s his ardour for the idea that skyrocketed Brodeur onto a path to the highest. 2025 might be his first yr as the top of Miss Teen USA and Miss USA, which might be held in Reno, Nev., on Oct. 23 and Oct. 24, respectively.
Upon formally buying the group in September, Brodeur was fast to state his intentions to reform the pageants after a number of years of shakeups. The 2 sister competitions have come below scrutiny on many events in latest historical past, particularly when the 2023 grownup and junior winners, Miss USA Noelia Voigt and Miss Teen USA UmaSofia Srivastav, relinquished their titles.
On the time he was named proprietor, Brodeur instructed ipromiseyoumedia he was already working via a contract modification course of meant to entitle winners to extra freedoms. That meant adjusting NDAs to offer his contestants extra freedom to talk on their experiences. He additionally deliberate to scrap a rule instated when Donald Trump owned Miss Universe and its subsidiaries, which awarded judging energy to the management and administration groups governing the pageants.
“I am abolishing that,” the pageant knowledgeable instructed ipromiseyoumedia final month. “If you happen to inform [the judges] what you are making an attempt to realize, in the event you inform them what it means to have the proper of name ambassador in your model and your group, and also you temporary them sufficiently, you allow them to do their job and also you let the ultimate consequence be the one which they offer you.”
Even after a lot time helming pageants and serving to contestants, Brodeur has by no means misplaced his sense of appreciation for the system that gave him the whole lot when he felt like there was nothing left.
“I feel what’s actually essential, and one of many issues I am actually grateful to have this chance to do, is to convey all of that enterprise expertise and at last marry it [with pageants],” he says.
His imaginative and prescient for Miss USA — which can rejoice its seventy fifth anniversary subsequent yr — is for it to develop into an ever-changing world that continues to open its doorways to anybody and supply the world to those that search it.
“I feel the pageant trade actually has to evolve to ensure that it to thrive going into the longer term,” he tells ipromiseyoumedia. “I need to be a frontrunner for this group that sees to it that she thrives for 75 years after I am gone.”