Meet Candace

Meet Candace.  She is a member of the first Getting Ahead class which graduated in early 2010.  As you learn more about Candace, you will notice that although she grew up poor and living in poverty, she eventually worked her way into middle class.  It wasn't until years after working and being self-sufficient did she hit a few bumps in the road and temporarily began to struggle again.  Keep reading to learn more about Candace's resilient story.

 Candace Did Not Anticipate the Medical Issues

"Poverty is a state of mind, not just a state of your finances," Candace says confidently.  She grew up just outside of Cincinnati, and as a first grader walking home from school one day she saw several "dirty and sad looking" children standing on the balcony of their apartment building.  When she got home, Candace insisted that her mother, "do something to help the poor children".  She was not expecting to hear that her family was having the same financial struggles as those "dirty" children since she and her siblings were neither dirty nor sad.  When you are poor you don't have enough.  Candace never felt deprived because of what she didn't have; she felt privileged because of what she did have.  Even though her mother had spoken the words, "we are poor too", the meaning would not fully resonate with Candace until well into her adulthood.

The one thing Candace knew as a small child was that she wanted to be a writer. And so she went to college with the right attitude and the intent of pursuing that dream.  Candace was fortunate enough to land an entry-level job working for an advertising agency where she had the ability to write anything and everything from internal documents to being part of the copywriting team.  At this point she was a self-sufficient career women who had helped herself rise out of poverty, but little did she know how rapidly things could change.