Miss USA 2003, Susie is the 3rd Hispanic to win the title of Miss USA and the first Latina from Massachusetts. A recent graduate of Endicott College, with a bachelor?s in interior architecture and design, she pledged to erase ethnic, cultural, and gender stereotypes. The first member of her family to graduate from college, she won the Capstone Award in recognition of her senior thesis. A professional model, she volunteers at organizations such as HAWC (Help for Abused Women and their Children), the Lawrence Girls Club, and Latinas Against Sexual Assault. She credits her mother with being her role model. Her mother, Carmen Cintron, reared Castillo and her two sisters as a single parent who subsisted on welfare while she cleaned homes and schols. Cintron had moved from Puerto Rico in 1974.
As a child, Castillo dreamed of becoming a model and actress. Despite the family’s impoverished living conditions, she practiced her runway struts and poses nonetheless. She did well in school, going on to complete a bachelor’s degree in interior design at Endicott College.
Winning the Miss US A contest led to a contract for a shampoo commercial broadcast in Argentina and to car commercials for Honda. Soon after, in January 2005, she copped gigs as cable network’s program host on shows like “Total Request Live” and “Weekend Dime.”
Castillo became engaged to Matthew Leslie in 2004. They married in Ipswich, MA on October 7, 2006