From internship to impact: How one UK student built a career

LEXINGTON, Ky. (June 2, 2026) — Most internships last a summer. Elliott Kraus’ lasted two years and ended with a full-time offer before he ever walked across the Commencement stage.

Kraus, a double major in finance and marketing in the Gatton College of Business and Economics at the University of Kentucky, found an internship listing on Handshake during his time at UK and applied to a marketing intern role at Bullard.

He was offered the role, and what was supposed to be a month-and-a-half engagement stretched into something much bigger. That internship — first in marketing, then in finance — ultimately led to a full-time offer as a business analyst at the company.

“Having an internship while I was actively in school was a force multiplier on my education,” Kraus said. “It isn’t just textbook and theory. You get to see how the theory lines up with the real world and how concepts are applied in practice.”

Founded in 1898, Bullard is a global manufacturer of personal protective equipment. The company is headquartered in Cynthiana, Kentucky, and has a significant presence in the Lexington area. Bullard is also a OneUK partner — one of the UK’s strategic corporate partners committed to holistic engagement with the university.

Kraus didn’t arrive at UK with a perfectly mapped-out plan. He chose Gatton College because he knew he was interested in business broadly. A gap year before starting college had given him something most freshman don’t have — a genuine hunger to be in the classroom.

“The gap year made me take college very seriously,” he said. “It made me realize how much I wanted to learn.”

Kraus gravitated toward finance because of a longstanding fascination with economics and the flow of money. But it wasn’t until he started working at Bullard as a marketing intern that something clicked.

“My first marketing internship at Bullard showed me that marketing is often data driven,” he said. “That internship is what made me realize I enjoy not only marketing, but business data analytics too.”

That realization prompted him to add marketing as a second major and pursue a minor in business analytics — a combination that would prove to be exactly the right preparation for the role waiting for him at Bullard.

Kraus credits professors Olivia Davis, Ph.D.; Bob Gilette, Ph.D.; Tom Groleau, Ph.D.; Jack Kirn; Robert Mahaney, Ph.D.; Darshak Patel, Ph.D.; and Jonathan Pliszka with laying the foundation that made his professional work possible.

“College doesn't teach you to do the job,” he said, “but it gives you the foundation for navigating the learning of the job.”

Kraus’ path at Bullard evolved in three chapters. He started as a marketing intern for 14 months, spending a summer running Google Ads campaigns. Then, after being offered a full-time position before graduation, he transitioned to a finance internship for nine months, a bridge role designed to prepare him for the full-time leap.

“It felt like a playground a lot of the time,” he said. “I was turned loose with data. Every single second of it was spent learning and understanding the data. It helped me add value quicker when I went into the full-time role.”

Now, as a business analyst, Kraus spends much of his time developing Power BI dashboards and automating business intelligence processes. One project he’s particularly proud of: overhauling the company’s scorecard report system for sales managers, transforming a static monthly summary into a dynamic, interactive dashboard that lets users slice and filter data on multiple dimensions with the ability to drill through to more detailed breakdowns.

“The Power BI dashboards I’ve developed have enabled detailed, accessible and relevant business insights for the users,” he said. “Focusing on automation while building these has allowed minimal maintenance work on the backend. I’m hard at work developing more data models and reports for different stakeholders within the company.”

When Kraus was wrapping up school and weighing his options, he wasn’t short on alternatives. His classmates were landing jobs at wealth management firms and financial institutions. He chose to stay at Bullard, and the reason, he says, goes beyond the role itself.

“What I like about Bullard is what we do — we protect people. Our mission is to protect workers around the globe so they can work productively and go home safely. You can feel that mission is always present in the work we do.”

That sense of mission hits differently when you walk through Bullard’s manufacturing facility and watch workers assemble the helmets and respiratory gear that end up on the heads and faces of people in dangerous environments.

“Even after years of working at Bullard, every time I step into the plant, I feel that weight. That responsibility,” he said. “And you can see it immediately in the faces and attitude of every Bullard employee. That we take what we do very seriously because we know our products help protect people when lives are on the line.”

The culture reinforced the decision. At Bullard, he says, respect isn’t just listed as a core value on a wall somewhere, people actually live it. His manager functions more as a mentor than a supervisor, and the office operates with a flatness that makes everyone feel like an equal contributor regardless of title.

“Bullard is the type of place where you ask a question, and they go one step further,” he said. “Questions often turn into a discussion on how we can build and improve upon what we’re doing, rather than just a simple answer or someone pointing you to the right person to ask.”

For students scrolling through Handshake wondering which companies are worth a closer look, Kraus has straightforward advice: the people make the place.

“The people create the experience,” he said. “It’s on you to do the work and add value. But when you have the right people around you, it is more than possible.”

For those specifically interested in working for Bullard, Kraus had specific advice. 

“Make sure you’re serious and you’re coming in looking for a place where you can really contribute,” he said. “How can I make the most of the time working toward protecting people?”

Kraus is candid about where he is in his career: early, aware that there’s a lot he doesn’t know yet and intentional about learning from the people above him.

“I stand on the shoulders of giants here at Bullard,” he said. “People have a lot of knowledge and experience here.”

Long term, he’d like to grow toward a senior business analyst role and eventually a leadership position — becoming a go-to expert voice on data within the organization. But he’s in no rush to skip ahead of all the learning it will take to get there.

“I’m aware there’s a lot of things I don’t know,” he said. “Right now I am learning how to follow and learn from the people above me. I can see myself becoming a leader, but I have a lot to learn before I jump into something like that.”

For a student who stumbled onto Bullard through a Handshake listing and stayed because the work meant something, that kind of patience sounds a lot like wisdom.