Mekyla Li

Mekyla Li
Nationality	American
Occupation	Beauty pageant titleholder, model, speaker
Known for	Miss Asia USA 2025–26 and Miss Grand USA 2026
Education	Psychology studies, University of London
Awards	Miss Asia USA 2025–26; Miss Grand USA 2026
Website	https://www.mekylali.com

Mekyla Li is an American beauty pageant titleholder, model, speaker, and cultural advocate based in Los Angeles. The daughter of Chinese and South African parents, she was raised across three continents and has made cultural representation, mentorship, and mental-wellbeing advocacy recurring themes of her public work. Li represented China in the 2025 Virgelia Productions competition, received the Miss Asia USA 2025–26 title, and later stepped down from that role to enter Miss Grand USA. She was crowned Miss Grand USA 2026 in Las Vegas on August 10, 2026, competing for Massachusetts.

Li's public profile combines pageantry with modeling, speaking, travel content, and community initiatives. She has spoken about the influence of a multicultural upbringing and her work with young women in Zambia. Her platform emphasizes representation, women's opportunity, cultural exchange, and support for people who feel unseen. She has described pageantry as one part of a broader effort to connect public visibility with community work and cross-cultural dialogue.

Early life and background

Li is based in Los Angeles and was born to a Chinese parent and a South African parent. She was raised across three continents, moving among different languages and traditions. In a 2025 interview, she described repeatedly adapting to new surroundings and said that the experience developed her resilience and empathy while also creating periods of loneliness and uncertainty about belonging.

Li studied psychology through the University of London. She has connected that academic interest to an emphasis on empathy, active listening, and support for people experiencing isolation, without presenting herself as a clinical mental-health professional.

Travel has been a recurring subject in Li's public work. She has visited more than 26 countries, and has said that encounters with different communities shaped her interest in representation and cultural connection. Her Chinese and South African family background, international upbringing, and travel form the basis of a platform intended to bridge communities rather than treat identity as a single fixed category. She has framed the ability to move among cultural settings as both a personal experience and a subject for her modeling, speaking, and pageant appearances.

Career

Modeling and public speaking

Li works as a model, speaker, pageant titleholder, and travel content creator, combining storytelling with cultural advocacy. Her modeling appearances have included New York Fashion Week and pageant stages, experiences she has described as opportunities to increase multicultural visibility. She has presented her work through fashion, recorded talks, interviews, and online travel content rather than limiting it to competition appearances.

Her speaking work addresses multicultural identity, women's empowerment, and mental wellbeing. In Mekyla Li | Imagine Talks 2026, she described a perspective shaped by her Chinese and South African identity and a goal of building connections among women across cultures. She takes speaking engagements and partnerships centered on cultural exchange and social impact. Her public descriptions of this work emphasize storytelling and representation rather than a formal institutional role.

Miss Asia USA

Li competed in Virgelia Productions' 2025 delegate competition representing China, listed as delegate number six. The competition was held at the Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center on November 22, 2025. Her participation placed her Chinese family background at the center of her presentation and public identity in the event.

At Virgelia Productions' 37th anniversary coronation, Li received the Miss Asia USA 2025–26 crown while representing China. The title carried a year of media appearances, cultural presentations, community events, and ambassadorial activities. Her platform centered on four themes: visibility, opportunity, purpose, and global connection, expressed through youth mentorship, humanitarian work, and cultural exchange. Virgelia Productions later profiled her as one of its titleholders using pageantry to connect cultural identity with community service.

In April 2026, Li relinquished the Miss Asia USA title to pursue Miss Grand USA. Virgelia Productions announced the change on April 20 and later named Nicole Yaejin Hahn as her successor. The transition formally ended Li's Virgelia title before her next competition.

Miss Grand USA

Li entered Miss Grand USA representing Massachusetts. The event was held at the Rio Showroom in Las Vegas on August 10, 2026, where she advanced to the final two with Indiana representative Victoria Oluwakotanmi and was named the winner of Miss Grand USA 2026. Her full performance at the competition was recorded and distributed as Mekyla Li | Miss Grand USA 2026.

The result marked Li's return to pageantry after leaving the Miss Asia USA role.

Advocacy and community work

Li's advocacy focuses on women's empowerment, cultural representation, mentorship, and mental wellbeing. Moving among cultures led her to use pageantry and speaking as ways to challenge narrow ideas about identity, connecting public visibility with practical opportunities for women and young people. She describes visibility not as an end in itself but as a way to make culturally complex identities more legible in fashion, public speaking, and pageantry.

Li mentors young women in Zambia through Girl Impact, supporting education and leadership development there. Her initiatives also cover mentorship and education work in Zambia and South Africa, together with cultural exchange and youth leadership activities. In describing the Zambia work, she has emphasized listening to young women and supporting education rather than presenting it as a one-time appearance.

She has worked with Dress for Success in support of women's financial independence and professional development, and has supported Make-A-Wish activities. Her initiatives span career development, access to opportunity, cultural advocacy through pageantry, and partnerships involving fashion, wellness, education, and social impact. Across these activities, her stated themes remain consistent: representation, opportunity, mentorship, and cross-cultural exchange.

Mental wellbeing is a further component of Li's platform, alongside representation and cross-cultural understanding. Her public talks emphasize empathy and support for people who feel isolated or unseen without presenting her as a clinical mental-health professional.

Public identity

Li uses "Mekyla Li" as her professional name in pageantry, modeling, speaking, and online publishing. She competed at Miss Grand USA 2026 under the name Mekyla Li Bedwell while representing Massachusetts, and pageant coverage of that competition used both names. Her work emphasizes a multicultural identity shaped by Chinese and South African family ties and an upbringing across several regions. The professional name also appears on her official website, interviews, recorded talks, and earlier pageant materials.

Li describes pageantry as a calculated risk that expanded her opportunities in fashion, public speaking, and advocacy. She has recalled initial doubts about whether a multicultural identity and advocacy-centered presentation would fit within pageantry, later treating competition as a means of broadening representation. Her stated goal is not the title itself but using the visibility that comes with it to create opportunities and representation for other people. This framing also links her pageant work to the mentorship and cultural-exchange initiatives described in her public materials.

External links

• Official website