Honor student, lifelong singer’s platform is support trauma survivors
OCEAN CITY — North Jersey girl Natalie Troyer-Kulstad was named Miss New Jersey’s Teen Saturday afternoon, June 20, at the Ocean City Music Pier.
Troyer-Kulstad, who just turned 17 and competed as Miss Bergen County’s Teen, said it was surreal when her name was announced as the 2026 winner.
“The girl who was first runner-up was probably more excited about it in the moment than me because I was just in utter shock,” she said Sunday morning after the tradition in which she dipped her toe into the ocean with new Miss New Jersey 2026 Kylie Gene Wright.
Becoming Miss New Jersey’s Teen hit her after a few moments.
“It was just incredible. I’ve never experienced a feeling like it,” she said.
Troyer-Kulstad has been singing since she can talk, she said. “If you were to ask my parents, I never shut up because I was always singing. It’s been a really, really huge part of my life and it’s something I always find joy in.”
She used that in the talent portion of the competition.
“I sang the ‘Sweetest Devotion’ by Adele. I’m in an all-female a cappella group with my school where we compete in a national competition,” Troyer-Kulstad said. “We have to curate a set list and I was given the soloist for one of our songs, and it was the ‘Sweetest Devotion’ so I decided to take it from our a cappella set and then put it into Miss Jersey’s Teen.”
She is a rising senior at Ridgewood High School, “so I am a true Bergen County native,” she said.
Troyer-Kulstad also is a ski racer but took a year off to focus on the SAT exam. She’s been sailing since she was 8 years old and will be spending much of her summer teaching current 8-year-olds how to sail. In school she is part of the sustainability club to educate other students on things such as carpooling and sustainable dorm items.
Troyer-Kulstad created her community service initiative — Believe Restore Empower Accept Trust Heal Elevate (BREATHE) — when she was about 14 years old. She provides advocacy for adolescent survivors of sexual abuse and trauma and has donated about 200 comfort kits “filled with contents that I believe the younger population needs because they’re consistently under resourced and overlooked,” she said. “I experienced something when I was 13 and felt like I did not have enough support, and that is what I try to correct.” She plans to expand on that advocacy as Miss New Jersey’s Teen with a statewide platform.
In the comfort kits are stuffed animals, fuzzy socks, journals, the kind of things to aid girls through their healing process, she explained.
“It’s been really successful over the past couple of years and I really cannot wait to grow it even more,” she said.
Although she competed in other pageants for two years after seeing an Instagram ad about growing her brand, this was her first year in the Miss America system.
“When I was little, I always wanted to be a princess so I was like, ‘Why don’t I just try it just for fun? And then I immediately fell in love,” she said.
Troyer-Kulstad is looking forward to the national teen competition. “That’s going to be a hard time, but it’s going to be incredibly fun,” she said. “I’ve heard from past title holders that that is going to be one of the best weeks of your entire life, so I cannot wait for that.”
She is also looking forward to learning more about other parts of the state — “just being able to explore New Jersey. Up until this past year, I kind of forgot that South Jersey even existed.”
A National Honor Society member who is in the top 5 percent of her class, Troyer-Kulstad will be teaming up with new Miss New Jersey Kylie Gene Wright. Wright is from Egg Harbor Township and works at Prep’s Pizza on the Ocean City Boardwalk when she’s not in her full-time gig teaching karate or taking college courses.
With Wright’s guidance, the new princess will be learning a lot about South Jersey over the next year and will be warmly welcomed back in Ocean City.
– By DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff