Jenna Holt tosses her long, red hair out of her face, rolls up the sleeves of her green blazer, grabs a clothing steamer and gets to working away wrinkles from dozens of pants, shirts and jackets.

She’s in the basement of a warehouse in Ypsilanti that houses the offices and boutique for Dress For Success, a nonprofit that helps women achieve economic independence by providing support, professional attire and training to succeed. Holt knows the place well, she’s been there rolling up her sleeves to do the work for years now. She heads to a back breakroom where a poster of 2019 Miss USA Cheslie Kryst hangs on the wall.

“She was so pretty,” Holt tells the Detroit Free Press. Kryst died by suicide in January 2022. “She was a huge advocate for Dress for Success and that’s how I first heard about it. I thought, ‘Wow! Here’s an organization that aligns with everything an empowered woman stands for and I need to be a part of that.’ ”

By day, Holt, who lives in Davison, works at General Motors in Warren on Chevrolet’s sales operations team where she writes the nationwide incentive programs used to help sell Chevrolet vehicles. But she spends her down time working on her car so she can race it and competing in beauty pageants. This spring, Holt will compete for the second time in the Miss Michigan USA pageant.

“I am going into the spring with a lot of hope and with a plan because I really do want to hold the title,” Holt says. “I want to represent Miss Michigan USA and make a difference across the state with Dress for Success and the other volunteer work that I’m apart of and advocate for women and women empowerment.”

‘Community over competition’

If she does win, it will be “a Cinderella story” of sorts, she said. Holt wasn’t supposed to compete this year. She turned the ripe old age of 28 and would have been over the pageant’s age limit. But in September the pageant decided to open it up to all women over 18, according to www.themissusa.com. The organization has even removed restrictions on contestants being married, divorced or pregnant, it said.

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“It’s incredibly inclusive,” Holt said. “My personal brand is choosing community over competition. I truly believe that when women succeed, we all succeed. So I love standing on stage with my fellow women and seeing them all succeed no matter what their background is or what their personal life holds.”

When Holt does compete, Cathleen Taylor will be cheering her on.

“You know it. You know it,” Taylor, CEO of Dress for Success, said.

Holt and Taylor met for the first time last year. Holt has been working with Dress for Success since 2018 in the other states she’s lived in as she relocated for different jobs at GM. Taylor said Holt is a role model for the women who pass through there.

“Sometimes you don’t even get a chance to meet women like that and to see the journey she’s been on,” Taylor said. “Some women here have heard about Jenna and some have had the opportunity to meet her. It’s what she’s done for herself. How she’s moved up the career ladder. Her own empowerment speaks to everything.”

A self-proclaimed gearhead

For all her glamour, Holt said she’s a gearhead at heart.

“I drive a 2007 Cadillac STS-V Supercharger. It has just under 500 hp,” Holt said. “I love driving fast. I love the power under the hood. I take my car to the race track on the west side of the state.”

The fastest she’s gone in her car at the track was about 100 mph. “I get such a rush, there’s few things that give you the same feeling, but competing in pageantry and driving my car on a race track give me the same adrenaline and pure joy,” Holt said.

Holt doesn’t just drive her car, she changes her own wheel bearings and worked on her air intake thanks to her dad who taught her how to tinker under the hood, she said. Holt’s dad was an engineer at GM for 33 years. Holt joined GM in the fall of 2018, her dad retired six months later. Her brother also works at GM in engineering specifications.

When it came time for college, Holt knew she wanted to be in the auto industry. She chose Northwood University in Midland because it specializes in automotive marketing and management. In 2017, she earned a bachelor’s degree in that field and completed an MBA from Northwood in 2020.

While in college, she completed internships at two Chevrolet dealerships in Michigan. The firsthand experience of seeing how cars are sold and serviced has been pivotal to her understanding of the car business and contributes to “the value that I bring to Chevrolet,” Holt said.

Her first job at GM was as a district sales manager. She excelled because the dealers respected that she’d been on a sales floor and knew how the retail end works, she said. She joined the Chevrolet sales operations team in her current role in April 2022.

‘A heart hobby’

Forget toddlers and tiaras. Holt didn’t get the itch to compete in pageants until 2015 while she was in college. It happened after watching two of her best friends compete for Miss Michigan.

“I remember sitting and supporting them from the audience and thinking, ‘Wow! Those are my best friends and I’m so proud. I should be up there with them.’ ” Holt said. “That’s what sparked it for me. I wanted to give it a try.”

Since her first state-qualifying pageant in 2016, Holt has participated in pageants across the country as she moved around with Chevrolet. Below are the pageants and how she placed:

• Miss Michigan USA 2023: She finished in the top 16.

• Miss Indiana USA 2022: She finished in the top five as “second runner-up.”

• Miss California for Miss America 2021: She was given the Social Impact Initiative Award.

• Miss Michigan for Miss America 2018: She finished in the top 10.

This spring will be her second time competing for Miss Michigan USA. In the competition last June, she landed in the top 16 out of more than 70 contestants. For the Miss USA pageants she doesn’t need a talent, but for Miss America she sang and played the trumpet, “Not at the same time,” she says jokingly. To prepare for a pageant, Holt pays attention to her physical, emotional and spiritual health, she said.

“It is not something you just wake up and show up for,” Holt said. “Your intention needs to be set to be prepared for it. It has been what I poured my heart into. It’s my heart hobby.”

Hey, Mary Barra, how about that leather jacket?

The pageants and her work at GM give Holt a platform to promote her other passion: Dress For Success.

“Because of pageantry and leading up to (a pageant), I get to use my voice to benefit Dress for Success,” Holt said. “At GM, I am one of the 24% of the automotive industry that are women, so it’s an easy way to make our voices heard and be able to use the platform in pageantry to share that story and share that success. All those things go hand-in-hand for me.”

She’s helped raise $3,500 for Dress for Success since 2018. Of that, Chevrolet donated $1,000 on Holt’s behalf last year. And, she’s held “Dress Drives” getting over 1,000 pieces of donated clothing for Dress For Success across Michigan, California and Indiana. Her most recent drive was this past spring at GM where colleagues donated about 550 items.

“We give people an opportunity to have the best so having these really nice items, that were well cared for, are designer and up-to-date … people come in here and feel like they hit the lottery,” said Dress for Success’ Taylor of the GM clothing donations.

There is one GM employee whom Holt has sized up as a “goal.” That would be GM CEO Mary Barra who is known for her fashion sense. Fortune magazine did a 2019 article on “How leather jackets became the new power blazer” and credited Barra for introducing the look, wearing it to shareholder meetings, media interviews and a host of other events.

In an interview with the Detroit Free Press last year, Barra said she tries to take most Saturdays off to recharge, and her favorite way to do that is with “retail therapy” at Nordstrom or Saks Fifth Avenue department stores. Her daughter is her stylist, Barra said at the time.

“She’s our goal. We’d love to get her as a keynote speaker,” at one of the nonprofit’s workshops or training sessions, Holt said. “The black leather jacket is iconic, if we could get that, that’s her signature.”

So how ’bout it, Mary?

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Contact Jamie L. LaReau at jlareau@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @jlareauan. Read more on General Motors and sign up for our autos newsletter. Become a subscriber.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Chevrolet marketing exec Jenna Holt could be next Miss Michigan USA