YOU can say that it was in the stars for Dayana Sabrina Mendoza Moncada. The bewitching Venezuelan model is now the newly crowned Miss Universe 2008.
The brown-haired, green-eyed beauty from Caracas, Venezuela, has traveled extensively.
In 2001 she signed with Elite Model Management and modeled in Italy, France, United States, England, Greece, Spain, Germany, Mexico and Peru for Versace, Roberto Cavalli and other fashion designers. No wonder she could move around the stage with ease and confidence. A winning point, don’t you think?
A true symbol of universal beauty, Dayana speaks Spanish, English and Italian all due to her interest in languages.
Dayana, who is 178 cm tall (5’10”), beat out 27 other candidates to win Miss Venezuela 2007 on Sept. 13, 2007, and became only the second woman representing the Amazonas state to win (the first being Carolina Izsak in 1991).
She was the favorite of pre-pageant bookies. Online entertainment betting website BetUS.com made Mendoza the +500 odds favorite to win the coveted Miss Universe crown.
Point-Spreads.com gossip columist Chatty Kathy said she was going “to bet on Dayana Mendoza for sure at +500 odds because Mendoza knows how to be calm in a stressful situation and being up on that stage next to Donald Trump would be very stressful.”
Here is an excerpt of an interview with Dayana.
What are your interests and what do you enjoy doing the most?
“Interior design, photography, advertising, and I enjoy meeting people from every country and learning languages.”
What is your career ambition?
Interior Design and also advertising but as Oscar Wilde used to say: “To define oneself is to limit oneself.”
What is your proudest personal accomplishment?
“Being independent from the age of 15 on, living in different countries by myself without knowing the language at the beginning and without the presence of my parents. Having succeeded in working in different cultures and learning the most from them.”
What is something unique that has happened to you; some interesting thing about you?
“I was once kidnapped, in what in my country is known as an express kidnapping. It was a very hard experience. I learned to remain calm in a very stressful situation and to try to reach to the human part of our abductors.”
In that interview, she said she wanted the judges to know she was grateful to life for her family and “for the opportunities to grow in different places and learn the most from them.”
She added:“Even in the hardest of times what my family and life has taught me has helped me push through and succeed.”
Now the world knows, and applauds this beauty who accepts where she came from and is confident where she is going.
