Shauna Gambill is a beauty queen from Acton, California who has held the Miss Teen USA title and competed in the Miss USA and Miss World pageants.
Gambill first won the Miss California Teen USA title in late 1993. In August 1994 she competed in the Miss Teen USA in the national pageant televised live from Biloxi, Mississippi. Her performance in the preliminary competition placed her fourth among the top twelve semi-finalists, but her scores were consistently high throughout the three final rounds of competition, ranking highest in swimsuit (16 August). Having impressed the finals judges, Gambill was crowned Miss Teen USA at the end of the pageant broadcast. She was seventeen years old at the time.
In 1997, two years after passing on the Miss Teen USA crown, she won the Miss California USA 1998 title. Gambill then competed at Miss USA 1998, where she placed first runner-up to Shawnae Jebbia of Massachusetts. The competition between the two is widely regarded by pageant fans to be one of the closest decisions in recent Miss USA history. Gambill was placed third among the ten semi-finals in the preliminary competition, with Jebbia in the middle in fifth place. In the final competition, however, Jebbia won both the Swimsuit and Evening Gown competitions and ranked somewhat low in interview, while Gambill was consistently high across all rounds of competition. Had Gambill beat Jebbia to become Miss USA 1998, she would have been the second woman to compete at all 3 pageants (Miss Teen USA, Miss USA, and Miss Universe) and the first Miss Teen USA to compete at Miss Universe.
Gambill was selected to respresent the United States as Miss World USA 1998 (now known as US Miss World) and represented the United States at the Miss World 1998 pageant, where she was a semi-finalist. She is also the first Miss Teen USA to compete at Miss World.
Gambill attended Highland High School in Palmdale, California and was valedictorian of her class. She married Mitch Gerth in Santa Barbara, California on 23 October 2000, In 2004, she was a judge at the Miss Teen USA pageant won by Shelley Hennig of Louisiana.