Teresa Benitez-Thompson.

• Position: NEVADA - Nevada General Assembly majority floor leader - Biography - Interview

Teresa Benitez-Thompson's rise to the leadership ranks of the Nevada General Assembly began with her discovery, as an eighth-grader at Clayton Middle School in Reno, of the challenges and rewards of competitive debate.

"I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the intense studying and research it involved. I really liked the deep dive," she recalls. "It proved to be a turning point for me, because I'd otherwise been ambivalent about academics." She went on to become a skilled debater in high school, winning a statewide competition in her junior year.

In 2002, Benitez-Thompson won another title--Miss Nevada--and was third runner-up in the Miss America contest the following year. Her prize money, along with scholarships from the Nevada Women's Fund, enabled her to graduate debt-free from the University of Nevada and earn a master's in social work from the University of Michigan.

After graduate school, she returned to Reno to work in the county adoption and foster-care programs. In her spare time she helped guide the development of the Nevada Empowered Women's Project. She and her mother, who worked as a waitress in local casinos and restaurants, were among a group of women who founded the project several years earlier to help young single moms living in poverty break free of the welfare system.

Gradually, she came to focus on "finding a way to do the kind of work--policy work--that impacts people," she says. So when the House seat in her district opened in 2010, "I knew I had to jump at the opportunity." Her first run for office involved "a very intense primary," but she won and went on to handily defeat her Republican opponent that fall. She hasn't faced a primary challenge since and was elected without opposition to her fifth term in 2018.

Described by EMILY's List, the Washington, D.C.-based women's political action committee, as "a fearless champion for women and families," Benitez-Thompson, 40, was nominated...