Joel "Jewlz" Morris
Sports Editor
Political science junior. Miss Texas Latina. Founder and president of the Influencer Club at Texas A&M University-San Antonio. Role model for young Latinas.
Nayahna Trevino has a lot of irons in the fire, but her ultimate dream is to be an immigration lawyer.
Her inspiration to pursue the career started when Trevino was 17 and attended her mom’s citizenship ceremony.
Trevino said she decided to become an immigration lawyer after realizing she wanted to help families like hers and ensure they had representation in important spaces.
Trevino, 23, has found ways to advocate for immigration rights and create safe environments for others to be included while pursuing her degrees.
Creating the Influencer Club on the campus of A&M-San Antonio was beyond just creating fun content and gaining more followers but to uplift the community by using one’s following.
“You’re an influencer, you have influence, you have a platform, so you use it for good,” Trevino said. “I wanted people to have a space where they might have not found that outside of college or within college.”
For example, Trevino led her club to help immigrants by hosting a thrift market to raise money for Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services.
“At the end of the day I know what the goal is, and that is to help my community, my culture and attribute to my faith,” Trevino said.
Starting the Influencer Club came with skepticism as people in Trevino’s family were concerned that being a social media influencer wouldn’t help her become a lawyer.
“There’s been people who have criticized the Influencer Club or criticized me for trying to pursue both,” Trevino said. “Don’t veer off too much.”
Being able to wear multiple hats or crowns is something Trevino uses to her advantage to make an impact.
Crowned Miss Texas Latina in September, Trevino has used her growing platform to advocate for immigration rights through her pageantry.
“I was using that title to uplift my advocacy,” Trevino said. “That’s what I mainly advocate for in pageantry, is immigration rights.”
Ten months prior being Miss Texas Latina, Trevino won a local pageantry to become Miss Alamo Heights and started to become involved with the community, connecting with small businesses and creating more meaningful content on her social media.
This semester Trevino is taking a gender studies class, which she deems her favorite class because it also reviews the history of “women of color,” Trevino said.
“I think it’s so important to know these things in our history,” Trevino said.
Learning about how women of color and hispanic women have had a slower track to real change and evolvement is what Trevino has been most fascinated by, Trevino said.
Drawing parallels between politicians and influencers, she has learned a lot from her classes that she can use for her social media platform.
“In both of those, it’s very important to know your audience, it’s very important to know your history. It’s very important to come correct,” Trevino said. “So that’s why I think I do so well in both of those because there’s a structure.”
With Trevino having her hand in multiple things, she is aware that it will be a challenge to be accepted by everyone in these fields with being a social media influencer and pageant model who wants to pursue a career in law. She battles the perception of “ditzy social media girl,” Trevino said. She’s standing her ground on not putting herself in a box.
“I am multifaceted in that I don’t put myself in just the box of a being pre-law and being in politics or being a model, being in pageantry,” Trevino said. “I think it’s very important to not confine yourself into these, stigmas, stereotypes, titles, boxes. It’s so important to be beyond that.”
Alamo City Studios Public Relations Director Corina Hludzinski has been a close friend of Trevino since 2023 after meeting at a networking event when the two were “inseparable,” Hludzinski said. Dancing all night with each other.
Prior to meeting each other, Hludzinski was already familiar with Trevino after seeing Trevino’s vlog on Tik Tok.
Since being friends, Hludzinski has seen Trevino leap over obstacles that stood in her way.
“The matter of how people view her,” Hludzinski said. “That’s been the biggest thing she’s overcome.”
These personal improvements have impressed people who work closely with Trevino.
“She doesn’t have limitations to herself,” said Raquel Ferrante, social media chair of The Influencer Club.
Trailblazing a path for other Latina and her community is something Trevino takes seriously.
“There’s so many Latinas that are also ambitious that want to also embrace these different hobbies,” Trevino said. “When people say, ‘what has been my favorite thing about being Miss Texas Latina?’ It is the wide-eyed gaze that I get from children, and it is the question I get from little girls.”
Consistently being in leadership roles with a bunch of eyes on her. Being a “resilient and compassionate leader,” is important to her, Trevino said.
Whether it’s at her campus, around friends, or in the community, Trevino continues to make a mark wherever she’s at by showcasing passion, leadership and ambition.
With not much longer before graduating with a bachelors, Trevino plans to take a break from pageantry while applying for law schools, such as St. Mary’s University and gaining her law degree to establish her non-profit immigration service. Once she is established in her career, Trevino is determined to continue pageantry with hopes to compete for Miss America.
