Rose Parade 2025: Meet Kate Kelly, Rose Court princess
Growing up in a family that values community service, Rose Court princess Kate Kelly has always been driven to make a difference.
Now a senior at La Cañada High School, Kelly is an active member of the National Charity League, Inc., a nonprofit that brings mothers and daughters together to promote philanthrophy, leadership development and cultural experiences. She has also been involved with Girl Scouts for 12 years, where her work earned her the prestigious Gold Awards, the highest achievement in Girl Scouting.
Beyond her service work, Kelly leads and participates in a variety of school activities. She is the captain of her school’s golf team, a member of the tennis and track and field teams, president of the Spanish Club, founder of the Spartan Guides, secretary of AI Ethics club, a math tutor, and a volunteer at Huntington Hospital.
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Last summer, Kelly became a research intern at The Bollyky Lab at Stanford University, where she combined her interest in science with her desire to help others.
Working in a lab focused on immunology and microbiology, Kelly gained hands-on experience with wet lab techniques and dived into complex research projects.
“ So I helped a lot researching phages, which are kind of like bacteria things,” she said. “And then, let’s see, I was able to write two papers, one was an actual research paper that I was able to contribute to, and then another one, I wrote a paper for an international periodical journal.”
Initially, Kelly saw the internship as a way to explore her passion in science, but a conversation with a fellow researcher changed her perspective.
That researcher, who was taking business classes to bring her discoveries to the public, gave Kelly an idea.
“ They (discoveries) can’t really be utilized until they’re properly tested,” she said. “You need a lot of financing for that…she didn’t currently have the background of business to do that. So I just thought that was something that maybe I could do to help.”
That realization set Kelly on a new path—exploring the finance side of biotech and science to ensure that groundbreaking advancements are accessible to more people. She hopes to pursue this interest further by studying business at schools like Duke University, Georgetown University, Northwestern University, Tulane University, Vanderbilt University, or Wake Forest University, among others.
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“ I really like helping people and I feel like that’s a way to utilize business to help people, like getting them more access to these new technologies,” she said.
The Rose Court experience has also reinforced for Kelly that small, meaningful actions can sometimes go a long way.
“ It really solidifies this, that your actions really matter, and people really notice when you do things, like when you make nice gestures,” she said.