For Dr Sih­lé Le­tren, the crown­ing mo­ment of Miss Uni­verse Trinidad and To­ba­go 2025 was a dream re­alised. A doc­tor by pro­fes­sion and now the coun­try's newest pageant queen, she grew up in Cunu­pia be­fore mov­ing to Di­a­mond Vale, where she spent most of her teenage years.

"You know the cliche - every lit­tle girl wants to be Miss Uni­verse - well that was me," she says, re­call­ing the sight­ing of an au­to­graphed pho­to of Wendy Fitzwilliam in a food es­tab­lish­ment near to her pri­ma­ry school which stirred the de­sire in her even fur­ther. When one of her role mod­els, her old­er cousin, com­pet­ed in the pageant in 2004, she was con­vinced that she too would grace the in­ter­na­tion­al stage one day.

As in­tel­li­gent and dri­ven as she is beau­ti­ful, Le­tren went through her school ca­reer at St Joseph's Con­vent Port-of-Spain, grav­i­tat­ing to­ward the Sci­ences. Al­though not en­tire­ly sure of her pre­ferred ca­reer, even­tu­al­ly, med­i­cine be­came the nat­ur­al next step, a path many of her sci­ence class­mates al­so pur­sued.

She en­rolled at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, Mona cam­pus, in Ja­maica, where she quick­ly re­al­ized that al­though she en­joyed the ex­pe­ri­ence of be­ing in Ja­maica, med­ical school was a dif­fer­ent kind of chal­lenge.

"It wasn't like SJC, where teach­ers help you grasp things and guide you. I strug­gled at first," she ad­mits.

To bal­ance the stress, she be­came in­volved in event pro­mo­tion, and was then in­tro­duced to mod­el­ling. Her first po­ten­tial in­ter­ac­tion with pageantry came in 2017 when rep­re­sen­ta­tives from Miss Uni­verse Ja­maica ap­proached her, not know­ing she was Trinida­di­an. Though she couldn't com­pete, it was a re­in­force­ment of the no­tion that she had what it took to com­pete for T&T.

Up­on re­turn­ing home af­ter com­plet­ing her stud­ies dur­ing the COVID pan­dem­ic, Le­tren felt that she was lag­ging be­hind her peers "and lots of my friends from school were do­ing things and achiev­ing." Al­though she had just grad­u­at­ed med­ical school and was work­ing, this feel­ing of un­der­whelm led her to en­ter the Miss Supra­na­tion­al pageant, and she was crowned Top Mod­el of the World T&T 2022. She then went to Egypt to com­pete in the in­ter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion, where she placed third run­ner-up over­all.

Lat­er that year, she en­tered Miss Uni­verse T&T for the first time and made the top six.

At that point, she thought her chances had ex­pired. The Miss Uni­verse age lim­it was 26, and she had reached the ceil­ing. But when the in­ter­na­tion­al or­ga­ni­za­tion lift­ed the re­stric­tion in 2024, the door opened again. Even so, she hes­i­tat­ed.

"I wasn't in the men­tal space to com­mit last year," she re­mem­bers, "I knew I want­ed to all in and do it prop­er­ly and win."

When the com­pe­ti­tion came back around in 2025, Le­tren ul­ti­mate­ly de­cid­ed on the last day be­fore the dead­line to send an email ask­ing to ap­ply. She then had an on­line in­ter­view, which was her au­di­tion.

From there, she threw her­self head­first in­to prepa­ra­tion. Pub­lic speak­ing, elo­cu­tion, di­et, fit­ness, and me­dia train­ing be­came part of her dai­ly rou­tine. She even start­ed a ra­dio broad­cast­ing course to get com­fort­able hear­ing her own voice. These prepara­to­ry mea­sures she de­scribes as "side quests" of the pageant - op­por­tu­ni­ties for self growth and im­prove­ment that come along with pageantry.

Her mas­sive ef­forts paid off in Ju­ly, when she claimed the Miss Uni­verse crown af­ter months of boot­camp-style train­ing. De­scrib­ing the crown­ing mo­ment as "in­cred­i­bly val­i­dat­ing," and a "re­ward for my hard work," she was grate­ful that the prepa­ra­tion she poured her­self in­to, all while hav­ing a de­mand­ing job as a doc­tor at a hos­pi­tal, had been recog­nised.

Her so­cial project, Be­hind My Smile, ini­tial­ly start­ed as a project fo­cus­ing on men­tal ill­ness, as Le­tren her­self strug­gled with de­pres­sion dur­ing her uni­ver­si­ty years and had to work through it.

"Hav­ing ex­pe­ri­enced it and re­al­iz­ing how many peo­ple are af­fect­ed to a sig­nif­i­cant ex­tent but don't have the re­sources, I want­ed to be that sup­port for them," she says.

How­ev­er, she has now ex­pand­ed the project to not on­ly en­com­pass men­tal health but al­so fo­cus on men­tor­ship and em­pow­er­ment for young women, of­fer­ing ca­reer guid­ance, fi­nan­cial lit­er­a­cy, and net­work­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties.

Mus­ing on her de­ci­sion to al­ter the project, she says: "I feel like I have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty as a doc­tor to change nar­ra­tives around men­tal health and ill­ness, but I al­so want­ed it to be ap­proach­able and re­lat­able; not on­ly for peo­ple who suf­fer with de­pres­sion, but for peo­ple who need guid­ance."

This so­cial as­pect of the pageant is proof to her that pageants are about far more than just beau­ty.

"Peo­ple think it's just a beau­ty con­test, but we have work to do to re­frame our mind­set on pageants and mod­el­ling," she says, "the world doesn't see that you're ex­pect­ed to have crit­i­cal quick think­ing, prob­lem-solv­ing skills, abil­i­ty to ar­tic­u­late your­self and be goal ori­ent­ed.

'And more than any­thing, you have to be a per­son of sub­stance and pur­pose."

She stands tall, con­scious of the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty she has tak­en on - to be a voice of change and a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of T&T.

Now, her at­ten­tion is on prepar­ing for the Miss Uni­verse in Thai­land this No­vem­ber. Since her crown­ing mo­ment, Le­tren ac­knowl­edges that it has been a whirl­wind, an ex­haust­ing sched­ule of ap­pear­ances, train­ing, and plan­ning, but she thrives on the pace.

"My cal­en­dar app is my best friend," she laughs. "I am a per­son who feels the need to be busy to feel ful­filled. It can be stress­ful, but man­age­able once I keep things bal­anced," cit­ing girls nights with her friends, mak­ing time for the gym and cre­at­ing bal­ance as the keys to keep­ing sane.

For Le­tren, the lessons from her jour­ney go be­yond win­ning a crown. For young women in­ter­est­ed in the pageant in­dus­try, she says that "you have to know your why. With­out that, it's easy to give up. Do your re­search, un­der­stand the dif­fer­ent pageants, and don't be afraid to fail and try again."

With that mind­set, she heads in­to the next chap­ter, ready to shine and rep­re­sent Trinidad and To­ba­go on one of the world's biggest stages.