Soterion, who graduated with a bachelor’s degree in business administration and a minor in international marketing, is a master makeup artist. She’s powdered the noses of Sen. Hillary Clinton, former President George Bush Sr., Tom Brokaw and Bono, among many other famous faces, as CNN’s makeup artist for presidential debates. She also operates a salon and has her own product line.

Becoming a makeup artist was a calling that she realized just after she was crowned Miss New Hampshire in 1987, while helping other contestants with their makeup.

“Any student of marketing starts to ponder what service, what product am I going to market? Where am I going to put this energy?” she says. “Every hair on my body stood up on end when the idea came to me that I was going to become a makeup artist.”

Kriss in a sense grew up at Southern New Hampshire University; she visited campus often with her mom, former Prof. Lynda Gamans Poloian. Now a mother of three with a successful business, she still relies on the lessons she learned here.

“I believe with my entire being that my college education was an essential component in my success as a makeup artist, as a business owner, as an entrepreneur,” she says. “How do I market this? How do I reach the consumer? These are things that I learned as part of my education here.”