Brett Brooks, CEO/Founder
Brett Brooks known to family and close friends as Brittanie, is the Founder & CEO of Pageants & Prosecco. She is also the reigning Miss Illinois North America 2021 and Illinois Regional Coordinator for the Miss Earth USA organization. P&P began as a podcast born out of her drive to better the pageant world by talking about the negative experiences she endured as both a contestant for over 10 years and as staff and judge for other systems. She’s a 3x Miss Illinois and competed in a handful of systems from the local Miss America competitions, Miss United States, Miss North America, Miss Black America, Miss Black USA, Miss Intercontential, Miss Teen USA state for Illinois and a few collegiate pageants. She served as a judge, cohost, recruitment director and assistant for statewide competitions.
Brett began working in media in high school working in production for her 10,000 member church’s Sunday service aired on stations across Chicagoland and Northwest Indiana. The Media Maven studied television and news production at Eastern Illinois University working for the only local news station in east central Illinois. Growing in ranks during her 4 years from production crew, to photographer, writer, to producer and sports. Yes, as Sports reporter, she both witnessed and reported on Jimmy Garaoppolo while he was a Panther.
After college, she took her shot at state politics studying Public Affairs Reporting while earning her Masters Degree from the University of Illinois Springfield. She worked for a local NPR station covering the Illinois General Assembly where she got a first hand look at the state’s political structure making her a Illinois Political Junkie. She had the opportunity to be an news producer for an NBC affiliate and a live out her dreams as a television reporter for an ABC affiilate station just outside of Chicago.
Pageants & Prosecco has since evolved from sharing negative experiences to creating dialogue in the industry about changes that need to be made to make contestants feel both safer and whole during the pageant journey to the crown. No longer having an need to address the bad, P&P is now designed to share the good news about those in the industry and life during and after the crown. This site is meant to have no shade, tea, gossip or shaming in any capacity but meant to highlight the achievement that the pageant industry provides all who dare to enter.
Favorite Quotes/Current Read/Current Binge
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood… I took the one less traveled by and that has made all the difference.
Robert Frost
Year of the Yes
Shonda Rhimes
The Morning Show
Apple TV
Pageants & Prosecco 