On a typical Tuesday, Samford University freshman Ali Mims squeezes in a magazine interview during her lunch break, classes, and then races to the Hoover Police awards ceremony that night to sing the national anthem. She rises early the next morning to accept an honor at the Women Who Shaped the State event before sprinting back to campus for classes and a voice lesson. In between, she juggles committee duties in Zeta Tau Alpha sorority. 

At 19, the mass communications/journalism major and operatic soprano is already a titleholder three times over: Miss Alabama Teen (March 2024), first runner-up at Miss America’s Teen (January 2025), and Miss Hoover (July 2025). Yet for Mims, the crowns are less about spotlights than open doors.

On June 3-6, she competed at Miss Alabama, staged at her own Samford campus, and placed in the top 14. She usually performs Puccini’s “O Mio Babbino Caro” but chose “Nessun Dorma” for the state pageant. “It’s an honor to represent my school and my city,” she says, “but the real work happens offstage.”

Music as Medicine

Mims’ mother, Haley Houston, was a Samford music major who pursued a career in music education. She has been her daughter’s voice teacher since toddlerhood. 

“I’d sit under her desk in the music hall during lectures,” Mims recalls. “When she practiced arias, I was right there.” 

Mother and daughter even performed together when Mims handed down the Miss Alabama Teen title in 2025—an emotional full-circle moment. 

One pivotal memory came watching her mother teach voice lessons to a child with severe autism. 

“The kids with special needs were always my best friends,” she said. “I saw the overwhelming abundance of joy that music brought to these students.” 

Research for a school project revealed that roughly 76 percent of Alabama schools offered no music to special-needs students. 

“I instantly knew that I wanted to be the person that could take that 76% down to zero,” Mims explains. “I looked at my mom on our back porch and said, ‘I’ve done this research, and I want to be the change.’” 

Having witnessed music unlock potential in ways medication sometimes cannot, Mims saw the need for a nonprofit. “I’ve been able to witness so many kids who are nonverbal, or they only say maybe five words, suddenly be able to make coherent sentences after using music therapy,” she says. 

A Heart for Special Needs: The Birth of Joyful Noise

The nonprofit’s origin story traces to Mims’ years as a peer helper at Chelsea High.

That work began when Mims was 13. Diagnosed with anxiety as a child, she found solace in piano lessons. The same music that steadied her became the spark for Joyful Noise, the 501(c)3 nonprofit she launched that year. The organization equips special-needs classrooms with sensory musical instruments and instruction books Mims personally wrote. 

To date, it has raised approximately $200,000 and reached 147 music classrooms across the United States, plus two in Nicaragua and another in South Africa. In late March, when she turns 19, Mims will officially become president under Alabama law, succeeding her mother, Haley Houston.

“Music becomes their medication.” Built on Faith and Prayer

Success, Mims insists, has little to do with savvy marketing. 

“We built it on the basis of Scripture—Psalm 100 in the Bible, ‘Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all you lands.’” Every box of instruments, every book, and every classroom visit is bathed in prayer. “Every box is prayed over. Every book that I sign is prayed over,” she notes. “When people ask how we’ve grown so fast, I say I don’t know—I’m just as amazed as you are!” 

Principals and superintendents open doors after hearing her story. Pageant titles have amplified her voice, granting access to grants and major donations, including a recent $30,000 gift from the Sandlin Foundation to equip every special-needs student in Hoover and a $50,000 gala last Friday. 

“I never thought when I started it that it would go that far,” she says. “But I really believe the Lord has blessed it.”

An Answered Prayer: Finding Her Place at Samford

Her path to Samford itself doesn’t feel like an accident, but a part of God’s will. After placing first runner-up at Miss America’s Teen, Mims received 11 full-tuition scholarship offers elsewhere. Samford—her and her mother’s top choice—was not among them. 

“We kept praying,” she says. Then Jody Hunt, Samford’s general counsel and vice president for Government Affairs—who has long ties to the Miss Alabama program—called with thrilling news in January 2025. Samford was offering a full scholarship. Mims recalls that she “fell out on the floor and cried.” 

The scholarship has since been extended. Moving forward, future Miss Alabama Teen winners will receive full tuition at Samford. Just recently Samford and the Miss America’s Scholarship Foundation Inc. announced that Miss America’s Teen national winner is eligible to receive a $100,000 scholarship to Samford.

Life-Giving Campus Culture

Mims’ mother attended Samford and earned her music degree while 2-year-old Ali tagged along to music classes and rehearsals. Nearly 16 years later, the campus vibe keeps exceeding expectations. 

“I just absolutely fell in love with the environment,” Mims says. “I fell in love with the professors and the way that this is just such a life-giving campus all around.” 

As a freshman she has thrived in the school she loves. 

“I’ve always been a very involved and very busy person,” she notes, including Greek life in Zeta Tau Alpha. Yet Samford’s beauty, she says, is its connection-oriented culture: “You don’t have to be involved in Greek life to make friends and get involved in other ways. It’s just kind of like a cherry on top.”

Classes of 15 to 20 students mean professors know her schedule and her life. They accommodate everything from pageant-related civic events to early-morning interviews on Fox 6 TV. 

Faith is an essential part of the experience in the classroom and across the campus. One Spanish professor, a longtime church acquaintance, “turns everything back to her faith and teaches on a foundation of faith,” Mims says. “It truly changes the whole trajectory of the way that the semester is going to go.” 

Weekly campus convocation services bring students together for worship and fellowship. “Every Tuesday morning I get to start my morning going to worship and hearing the Word,” she shares. “I’ve really, really enjoyed being able to be here and not only stay connected to my faith, but grow in it and continue to let it get stronger.”

A Bright Future

Mims aspires to become a news anchor, a goal that aligns neatly with her journalism major and public platform. She recently launched a music therapy app on Google Play and has three books plus a coloring book on Amazon. Her website, joyfulnoise.com, lets teachers apply for free instrument boxes. 

Next semester she plans to double-major in nonprofit management “so that I can kind of learn the ins and outs of all of it.” The nonprofit “is my little baby,” she says. “I started it from nothing… and it doesn’t stop after pageants. This is going to be something I’m doing for the rest of my life.”

Whether belting a solo, delivering instruments to a classroom, or anchoring a future newscast, she measures impact by the joy she helps create. In an era when young leaders often chase virality, Ali Mims proves that quiet obedience—praying over packages, showing up for special-needs friends, and trusting a scholarship that arrived after persistent prayer—can echo louder than any spotlight. 

Today, Ali Mims is known for much more than the crowns she has earned. She is building a legacy of joyful noise that reaches far beyond the stage.