Gretchen Carlson said that becoming chairwoman of the board of the Miss America Organization is part of a "call of duty" for her after a scandal over internal emails in which the board's CEO and others slammed former pageant winners' personal lives and appearances.
"I plan to make this organization 100 percent about empowering women," Carlson said Friday on ABC News' "Good Morning America."
"I look at this as a call of duty. I had no intention of ever having this position. It's a volunteer job, and it's a huge undertaking. But for me, in being a former Miss America, I felt compelled to come back and help the program," she said in the interview.
Carlson was 1989's Miss America, and on Monday was named chairwoman of the organization.
Carlson said she was surprised about the internal email scandal. The journalist settled a lawsuit in 2016 over a sexual harassment case against then-Fox News chairman and CEO Roger Ailes.
"I was shocked," Carlson said in the ABC interview. "I mean, it was appalling. But part of me also knows, after my life over the last 18 months, that this kind of behavior is prevalent, unfortunately."
In the ABC interview, she said she sees a positive change from the events of the #MeToo movement, focusing on those who have experienced sexual harassment.
"When I jumped off my cliff on the whole sexual harassment story 18 months ago, that was a lonely experience. But look at what happened when that gift of courage kept being passed on to one woman, to another, to another. We formed a collective voice and look where we are today, in a tsunami," Carlson said in the interview.
"I find that incredibly empowering in this #MeToo movement, that some of the women who were allegedly maligned in those appalling emails, are now running the place… It's a form of justice," Carlson said in the interview.
After being named to the chairwoman position, Carlson tweeted praise for the volunteers in the "iconic program."
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