Get ahead with Kimberly Phillips, our Playmate of the Month for September 2009. She’s tall, with pale porcelain skin, red hair and deep green eyes. Not too long ago, Kimberly was a liberal arts student, working full-time as a waitress and preschool teacher, and struggling to pay for her car and tuition. “I just couldn’t get ahead,” she said. “I had to do something different.” She and her best friend downed a bottle of wine, stripped down in front of the camera, and sent the results to Studio West. “I figured that if it happened, it happened,” she says. And two days later, it did – a casting agent called and invited Kim to test for Playmate.

She was an immediate hit, and in addition to her Centerfold, Kim appeared on the October 2010 cover of the magazine, and she launched The Smoking Jacket with a special set of pictures and videos. “Playboy really changed my life,” she says. “I was able to pay my debts, and I’ve been able to travel the world.

I have a brand-new sense of confidence and ambition in life.” After she shot her Centerfold, Kimberly packed her bags and moved to Los Angeles, and she never looked back. “I try to stay positive,” she says. “Change is the only constant in my life, and I fully embrace it.” She’s a successful model, and her schedule is full of castings, shoots and hosting gigs for Playboy. She works hard, but in her free time, Kim likes to take it easy – she loves to read, and would take a good old-fashioned book over a digital reader any day. “I love to cook and eat,” she says. “I support animal rights, and eat vegetarian when I can.” At some point Kim would like to go back to school and finish her degree – but for the time being, she’s to lay out on a Los Angeles beach with her boyfriend and their dogs. “I want to be happy in life,” she says, smiling. Sounds like happily ever after to us. Kimberly talks about change, positive reinforcement and the ultimate sex symbol in her Facetime interview.

Kimberly Phillips needed a break, damn it. The 22-year-old from Corona, California had been working her perky butt off ever since she could remember, earning A’s in high school, paying for a car through a slew of waitressing jobs and scoring a liberal arts degree as she slaved away full-time at a Montessori school. “I was just exhausted and couldn’t get myself out of debt. So one day I said to Natalie, my best bud since the fifth grade, ‘I want to try something different. I want to be something different.'” She and Natalie downed a bottle of wine, snapped some sexy photos and sent them to Playboy. “Then we figured we’d just forget about it,” Kim says. “If it happens, it happens.” Two days later the phone rang, and voilà – it happened. “It’s so crazy,” she says. “I still don’t believe it. This experience is a million percent different from what I’m used to, because I’m so shy; I’m so not an L.A. girl. But I now have a whole new sense of ambition and confidence. I’m, like, Dude, if I can be a Playmate, what else can I do?” Has Miss September learned any lessons from her overnight success? “Stay positive,” she says. “Never in a million years did I believe I’d be a Playmate, that this would turn out to be my fresh start, my big new year. You gotta keep the faith.”