Amy Schneider has won Jeopardy!’s Tournament of Champions. The former software engineering manager walked away with the $250,000 grand prize Monday night.
“I feel amazing,” Schneider said in a statement. “Earlier in the finals, I had this sudden moment of seeing myself and being like, ‘I’m on stage in the Tournament of Champions finals,’ and that was crazy. And I won! It’s a great feeling.”
Earlier this year, Schneider became the contestant with the show’s second-longest winning streak, as well as the most successful woman ever to compete on Jeopardy! She’s also the first transgender contestant ever to qualify for the Tournament of Champions.
Last November, she began her record-breaking 40-game winning streak by ending San Francisco software developer Andrew He’s five-game streak. Schneider faced He again, along with Sam Buttery, an associate professor of operations research at the Naval Postgraduate School in Pacific Grove, California in the Tournament of Champions finals.
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“I both wanted to [compete against He] and was afraid of facing him again,” Schneider said in a statement. “I knew he was one of the top competitors in the field. He was definitely someone that I knew could beat me because he very nearly did before, and he did a couple of times here as well.”
“Any of the three of us really could have won if a very small number of things had gone differently,” she continued. “I’m glad we got a really fair chance to test our skills against each other, and I’d love to play [He] again someday, somehow.”
Following her 40-game win, Schneider has become something of a trans icon. Earlier this month testified before Ohio lawmakers against a bill that would block transgender youth from accessing gender-affirming medical care and require teachers to out trans kids to their unaccepting parents.
Having won the Tournament of Champions, Schneider said she’s going to continue to represent the trans community.
“I’m going to keep going out there and being me,” she said. “Being in places where people like me haven’t been before, it’s a very powerful thing to do.”
