Ten Years, Ten Women: May

May joined Better Me in 2016, the same year the program began, without any particular expectation of what it would give her. What she did know, going in, was that the foundation's intentions seemed genuinely good, and that was enough to make her curious.

What's stayed with her longest is a single framework: SMART goal-setting, a method she still uses today, years later, every time she sets a goal or plans ahead. It's a small thing to name, but it's the thing she reaches for automatically now, long after the workshops that taught it to her have ended.

Over the course of the program, she describes becoming more confident and developing real skill in financial management and budgeting, alongside a shift in how she manages her own emotions day to day. That combination of steadiness and structure gave her the confidence to do something she hadn't planned on: return to school. She's now working toward a university degree.

What she's proudest of is that she's never given up, even during stretches when things weren't going smoothly. She says she still believes there's always something valuable left to learn, a decade into her relationship with the program and counting.