At just 21 years old, Yityish Aynaw has gone on a remarkable life journey from a little girl playing barefoot in an Ethiopian village to an Israeli beauty queen who's ready to shine on the world stage.
Last February, the stunning 21-year-old grabbed international attention after becoming the first woman of African descent to be crowned Miss Israel at the country's beauty pageant.
"To be first, you have all the attention focused on you and I have to represent my whole ethnic group because through me they see the models," says Aynaw, who will represent Israel at the next Miss Universe contest. "Through me they see and discover our whole ethnic group." see more photos after the cut...
Her win in February changed her life instantly. Within a matter of weeks, her name and image were splashed across newspapers and websites, both in Israel and abroad.
The publicity also caught the attention of one of her heroes: Aynaw was invited to an exclusive state dinner for Barack Obama in honor of his first visit to Israel as U.S. president.
"This was an incredible moment," she says. "He was a figure that I want to emulate. I did a project on him in school and I knew what he had been through and what he had done. He was like a mentor for me, so to meet him and say hello, it was like closing a circle."
Aynaw says she had never expected something like this would happen to her.
"Suddenly I thought about the little girl who had suffered and the little girl whose only dream was to run and play the whole day. The pain I went through; I saw it all,"
she says.
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