Kelly Lu Holder graduated from Southeast Missouri State University in May of 2014, holding an undergraduate degree in mass communications with a double emphasis in multimedia journalism and advertising.

When the Red Bus Project, a double-decker gutted and transformed into a mobile thrift store with the goal of creating awareness on college campuses across the country about the needs of orphans worldwide, stopped on Southeast's campus last semester, Holder was hooked and applied for an internship spot.

She discovered her leadership style may not necessarily lie in reaching new entrepreneurial heights, but maybe it was in reaching hearts.

Where has your life taken you after you graduated six months ago?

Southeast, it really was a learning process for me. It did teach me things that I really come out into the world and [think] like, "Wow, I'm so glad that, you know, I was afforded the experience and the teachings to actually prepare myself for the outside world." But I don't know, right now I'm out here, and I just got done with this internship with Show Hope. Going away, away from Missouri and away from home and doing an internship somewhere else has really opened my eyes to a lot of different things. It's grown me through my faith, through my education experience and just kind of made me look around and see that there are actually bigger and better things out there.

How was your experience with the Red Bus Project, which is connected with Show Hope.

Show Hope is a Christian non-profit based in Franklin, Tennessee, about 20 minutes out of Nashville. They do a couple of really cool things -- they help fund families who can't afford adoption because adoption can be anywhere from like $25,000 to $35,000, which is insane how expensive it is. ... And then they also have three or four special care centers in China to help orphans who have special needs like heart diseases or down syndrome or they had something that caused them to go blind, just little things like that. They help those orphans get the special care that they need and then help them get adopted.

Most of the time -- it's really sad when you go to orphanages or anything across the country or overseas, they'll have the "normal" kids out in front and then you'll ask them where the special needs are and they actually have a whole entire separate room like shoved in the back corner for special needs kids because they're just normally pushed to the side most of the time. So it's really great that Show Hope has these special care centers that provide solely to give those kids the medical assistance that they need.

So that's Show Hope ... and then the Red Bus Project is the student initiative of Show Hope. What we do is we go around and we travel to different college campuses. Like my tour was a little over four weeks, and we did a different college campus every single day. We were a mobile thrift store, and what we did is we just traveled and we advocated for orphan care, because most of the time, especially college students, we feel like they have such a huge voice. We want to hit them directly because nobody speaks better to a college student than a college student. So we feel like if we can get college students involved in the orphan crisis it can just open so many doors and so many eyes to what it really is. So we go and we do this mobile thrift store, and it just gives us the chance to communicate and open up to college students and hopefully give them a heart for orphan care in the future.

How was your internship with the American Red Cross while you were still a student?

With the American Red Cross, I found out about the internship when I was at Southeast on a billboard in Grauel, like randomly. What I did for them is I was their Social Media Strategic Planner. I know it sounds fancy, but what I did for them pretty much was for the southeast Missouri region, I did all the social media. So I did Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, I planned all those accounts ... and then I just, you know, I created a couple different flyers and helped plan events. The people there were just super sweet and it was kind of like a small, small family. But it was really, really a cool experience to get to help, and we did mainly American Cross disaster relief, so it was just a really cool experience to get to reach out to people, especially in our own community and in our own area and help them in ways that I never thought that I could before when I was on my own.

What inspired you to take on these positions?

Actually for the American Red Cross I just really needed an internship, and I looked at it and I was like, "OK, at least you know the American Red Cross is a great, great organization," helping with blood work and disaster relief, so I just got involved with that. ... Honestly, my degree is in advertising and journalism, and you can do a lot I feel like in those areas whenever you're in communications. For me, mainly, you know, I want to be successful and I want to do things that are involved with my career, but I also have always had this strange intuition in me, I want to really do something that matters and Red Cross allowed me to do that and the Red Bus Project was just this huge blessing, like they came to Southeast and that's how I found out about them. I applied for the internship and they accepted me. They don't even have requirements, they just called me up and they kind of just see where your heart is. ...

It just taught me so much about myself and made me feel so gracious to have the things that I have and to have the opportunities that I'm given and the life that I'm given every single day. It's just, it's really inspired me to go on and do something that matters, to help people in any way I can, and that's kind of what I'm working on right now.

What sort of leadership roles did you hold at Southeast?

Well I was in a sorority, I was in Alpha Chi Omega, which helped me in my leadership role immensely. I mean, I was on our exec board for Alpha Chi and we planned events together, we did so many things that built me up into the, I guess, leader, you could say, that I am today. Then I did, I was an executive member on the Panhellenic board, which is an all Greek kind of executive board for all the Greek women chapters on campus. I was on that, which really helped me just grow my love even further for the Greek community because it's such an awesome, awesome program. Then doing my work with the Arrow, as managing editor for the Arrow -- let's just say that I put a lot of my time and effort into it. I didn't really have time to do anything else when I was working for the Arrow, but all the people that I got to meet and the community that I got to experience more at Southeast, I would have never been able to do that if I hadn't been a part of the Arrow. It built me into a better person just through the people that I met and the experiences, and it's just inspired me to take that on into the real world, into my future jobs and future experiences to come.

Did they prepare you for the work you do now?

I definitely think that Southeast prepared me for what I'm doing today. ... Southeast I feel like gets a lot of criticism and students are like, "Oh, why should I go to Southeast?" but it's really been a rewarding experience to say that I have a degree from Southeast Missouri State University, and it shows when I come out into the real world and people are actually really appreciative of where I went to school and what I've done. That makes me smile even more.

What does it take to be an effective leader?

I guess it would be to know your own strengths and especially knowing your own weaknesses. I think to be a good leader you definitely have to use the people around you. Obviously you're not a one-man band. People are around you and people are on your team for a reason, and they're there to help you. Even though I want to do everything, and I want to do this awesome job and be the one who gets the credit, you realize that you can't do that and you need to utilize the people around you because they have talents and traits and characteristics that you would never even dream of having, and you need that to be successful. You can't do it on your own ... You know, learn to appreciate your weaknesses, too, and try to seek that out in other people.