Naw May Lyar Soe is a public health and humanitarian professional working at the intersection of health systems strengthening, humanitarian action, research ethics, and social justice. She is passionate about building resilient, community-led health and governance systems that are accountable to the people they serve.

Her career began by supporting humanitarian health coordination among ethnic health organizations delivering lifesaving services in conflict-affected Eastern Myanmar. Working alongside ethnic and community-based health providers, she contributed to cross-border humanitarian responses, emergency referral systems, medical supply chains, frontline health worker capacity building, and maternal and child health programmes during Myanmar's political and humanitarian crisis. These experiences shaped her understanding of how locally led health systems continue to function despite conflict, displacement, and fragile state institutions.

Currently, May partners with grassroots civil society organizations across Myanmar to strengthen humanitarian response, community protection, transitional justice, civic participation, and democratic governance. Beyond grantmaking, she supports organizational capacity, institutional resilience, and locally led solutions that enable communities to respond to crises and shape their own futures.

Alongside this, she coordinates an independent community-based ethics review mechanism serving researchers and marginalized communities along the Thailand–Myanmar border. She works closely with community-based organizations to promote ethical, community-centered research involving ethnic communities, migrants, refugees, and displaced populations, ensuring research is conducted with communities rather than merely about them. She believes research should generate not only evidence, but also trust, equity, and tangible benefits for the communities it seeks to serve.