Coffee No Cream

I started Coffee No Cream at 50 years old. Not because I had everything mapped out. Not because I knew it would work. And definitely not because I had some grand monetization plan. I started because there was something I wanted to do, and I was tired of letting fear, age, and the idea that I'd somehow “missed my window” keep me from doing it. Now I'm 52, Coffee No Cream has grown into a co...

What if doing great work isn’t enough? Beverly Dines became a C-suite executive by age 30, and after leaving corporate America, she built an online community of more than 500,000 people by sharing the career advice most of us never hear, including what is actually being said behind closed doors. In this episode of Coffee No Cream, Beverly and I talk candidly about the unwritten rules of corporate...

In this episode of Coffee No Cream, Erin Braxton sits down with psychologist Dr. Natalie Jones for a provocative conversation about narcissism, dating, race, relationships and some of the warning signs Black women may be overlooking. What does narcissism actually mean, and how is it different from the way we casually use the word? Dr. Jones breaks down narcissistic traits and explains how she beli...

What happens when you grow up as a Black girl surrounded almost entirely by white people? In this episode of Coffee No Cream, I sit down with Tracie Walker to talk about our experiences growing up in predominantly white schools and communities, and the lessons we learned about race, belonging, and what it means to navigate spaces where very few people look like you. Tracie shares how her parents p...

We’re back with a brand new episode of Coffee No Cream, and we’re jumping into a conversation that Black women have A LOT of feelings about: code-switching. Executive coach Ashley Morgan is back, and she has a perspective that might challenge the way you think about changing how you communicate in different spaces. Is code-switching always about making ourselves more palatable to white people? Is...

Black women, if you're experiencing chest pains, headaches, hair loss, anxiety, the Sunday Scaries... I could go on. And you're brushing them off, thinking they're normal. They're not. We're under attack, and we've been under attack. This is the final episode in our Summer Rewind series, and it's the one that ties the physical cost of all of it together. Dr. Kimani Norr...

Should you stay in corporate, or should you go? That's the question this whole episode is built around. Over 62 episodes, you and your guests have answered this from every angle, how to find the right organization, how to shift from tasks to value, how to build confidence outside of a job title, what burnout actually costs. This Summer Rewind pulls together the strongest career advice from the...

Religion, and specifically Black women deconstructing it, has been my best-performing topic on this podcast in the last year. So for this Summer Rewind, we're going back to it. This episode pulls together my conversation with Ashante, The Unpunishable Woman, and the religion panel with Abby The Attorney and Tammy Triolo, three different religious backgrounds, three different roads to the same...

The nerve. That's really what this episode is about. Since we launched in May 2025, we've hit 62 episodes, and across nearly all of them, one thing keeps showing up: the sheer nerve people have toward Black women, especially in professional spaces. This is part four of our Summer Rewind series, and it pulls together some of the most outrageous "Coffee No Cream moments" from the e...

You may think you're not playing the game at work. The truth is, the game is being played whether you choose to participate or not. After more than 60 conversations with Black women, one lesson continues to surface: success isn't just about working hard. It's about understanding the unwritten rules, protecting your peace, setting boundaries, and moving strategically. In this Summer Rew...

"Black women, Black girls are mean. And you know it. I know it. We are." That's how this one starts, and I'm not exempting myself from it. This is part two of our Summer Rewind series, not a rerun, a new conversation built from clips across the last 62 episodes. Dr. Lydia Bullock admits she was "a jealous girl" growing up and had to do the internal work to unlearn it. A...

My hair. My business. That's the whole thesis of this episode, but it took hearing the same comment from four different women, across four different conversations, before I saw it clearly enough to say it that plainly. This is the first episode in our Summer Rewind series — not a rerun, a new conversation built from clips across multiple episodes. It starts with a 90-year-old family elder tell...

Her boss's boss looked her in the eye and said, "We're not ready to promote you." Roxy Couse joins me on Coffee No Cream to talk about what happened next. She spent almost 15 years in corporate, Dillard's, Whirlpool, Avery Dennison, then over to tech at Bloomreach and Sitecore, before that one skip-level meeting changed everything. She started posting on TikTok, built close t...

She was eight months pregnant, stuck in a four-hour commute home, and done. Jamila Souffrant joins me on Coffee No Cream to talk about what happened next. She's the creator of the Journey to Launch podcast and author of Your Journey to Financial Freedom, and her story is proof that financial freedom isn't about luck; it's about a plan. In two years, she and her husband saved $169,000,...

Three Black women. Three different exits. One conversation the church doesn't want you to have. In this panel episode, Erin sits down with Abby The Attorney, Tammy Triolo, and Ashanti, The Unpunishable Woman, to talk about what it really looks like to leave organized religion. Not the sanitized version. The real one. The grief, the freedom, the rape nobody talked about, the community you lose, and...

Have you ever completely cut someone off because they said something you didn't like? As I've gotten older, I've realized that not everyone belongs in the same box. Some people are your people. Some people are Hey Girl Hey. Some people are small doses. And some people need no access at all. In this episode, I'm talking about friendship, family, disappointment, expectations, and the...

She has no man, no kids, and zero apologies about it. And she built a life that proves you don't need either one to win. Ashanti, known as The Unpunishable Woman, joins me on Coffee No Cream to talk about what it really means to be rooted, regulated, and resourced as a Black woman. Her story starts in a place most of us never talk about, being punished by her church for her own assault, and en...

What does it really mean to build wealth as a Black woman? In this episode of Coffee No Cream, I sit down with Teri Williams, President and COO of OneUnited Bank, the largest Black-owned bank in the United States, to talk about money, entrepreneurship, corporate America, purpose, and the lessons Black women need to hear about wealth. Teri shares the story of her great-grandmother, an entrepreneur...

Everybody's telling you to consult. But is that really the move? If you've been thinking about leaving corporate and someone told you to "just start consulting," this episode is for you. Consulting can be lucrative, but it's not a quick money grab, and it's not for everyone. It takes time, network, strategy, and a willingness to sell yourself. And a lot of us don't wa...

Black women are some of the most brilliant, capable professionals in any room...and we are chronically underselling ourselves. Not because we don't work hard. Because we've been conditioned to describe our tasks instead of our value. And those are two very different things. In this episode, I'm doing something I've never done before. I'm sitting down with Claude live, on screen...

One year ago this week, I launched the Coffee No Cream podcast to create community, conversation, and support for Black women navigating life, business, work, relationships, and the unique experiences we carry every day. But one year later, I think we need a reset. In this anniversary episode, I’m talking about mental hygiene, overstimulation, algorithms, emotional exhaustion, online discourse, di...

Some Black women don’t just survive trauma. They develop what Courageous calls “trauma upgrades.” In this episode of Coffee No Cream, Erin Braxton sits down with Courageous for a powerful conversation about survival, self-protection, emotional conditioning, healing, and the ways Black women learn to adapt in environments that were never designed to protect us. Together, they unpack the hidden cost...

✊🏾A lot of people say they don’t play games. At work. In relationships. In life. But the truth is… you’re in the game whether you like it or not. And if you don’t understand how it works, you’re the one getting caught off guard. This episode is about something deeper than quick comebacks or handling awkward moments. It’s about what you’ve built (or haven’t built) that determines whether somethin...

There are rules in corporate that nobody ever explains…and if you don’t know them, you can end up working hard and still getting nowhere. In this episode, we break down what’s really happening behind the scenes, especially for Black women navigating corporate environments. This is about more than just working hard. It’s about understanding how the game is actually played. Because a lot of us were...

What does “Black Excellence” really cost us? We celebrate it. We expect it. We demand it. But rarely do we talk about what it takes to sustain it, and who pays the price. In this episode, we sit down with Natasha to unpack her research on the real, often unseen cost of Black excellence. From pressure and performance to emotional and financial tolls, this conversation goes beyond the highlight reel...