Meet Trasee, a One Purse scholarship recipient and 2026 Freedom to Dream honoree
A bachelor’s degree, an MBA in December, and a career built on financial independence.
At this year’s Freedom to Dream luncheon, we honored three women with the Freedom to Dream Award for what they have built, and for how they now lift up others. Trasee was one of them.
Just a few years ago, Trasee could not have imagined standing in front of a room like that. In 2023, she made the decision to get sober. For years she had carried deep guilt and shame. She believed the lie that her past defined her and that she didn’t deserve a different life. “But God had a completely different plan for me,” she shared, and doors began to open that she never thought were possible.
One Purse became a big part of that journey. Trasee received a One Purse scholarship, and it meant far more than tuition. “It reminded me that my life still had value,” she told the room, “and that everything I had been through wasn’t for nothing.”
The women she met meant even more. Through One Purse, Trasee found a community of women who had walked similar paths, where she could share some of her deepest hurts with people who truly understood. For the first time in a long time, she didn’t feel alone, and that connection brought healing she didn’t expect.
With her scholarship, Trasee earned her bachelor’s degree in organizational leadership with a minor in strategic communication. Today she is an HR manager at a treatment center, where she encourages other survivors and people in recovery to believe they are capable of so much more than their past. In December, she will graduate with her MBA.
Even so, the degrees and titles are not what she is proudest of. “I’m most proud that I am now a wife, a mom, and the kind of woman my daughter can look up to, and that my son can be proud of,” Trasee said. “They get to see what it looks like to be a survivor.”
Why Trasee’s story matters
Trasee came to One Purse the way every woman in our education program does: referred by a partner organization that walked with her earlier in her journey. She has since earned a degree, built a career, and become the person in the room who tells the next woman she is capable of more. That is the generational impact we work for. A woman who can provide for herself and her children is far less vulnerable to returning to unsafe people, and far more able to pass down something new.
More than 60 women are on our waitlist right now. Each one is looking for the same pathway to healing, education, and financial independence that Trasee found.
You can help the next woman take that step. A monthly Dream Giver gift of $125 funds an average scholarship for one woman on our waitlist.
Become a Dream Giver →
