Shameless Reinvention

She Wasn't Being Strong. She Was Getting Home. Composure is not consent. It's survival. On the Fourth of July, a photograph taken by Reuters photographer Cheney Orr stopped the country in its tracks. A Black woman sitting quietly on a Washington metro train, surrounded by nearly a dozen masked members of the white nationalist group Patriot Front. Within hours it was being called the defining image...

What does it actually cost you to be the one who always figures it out? In this deeply personal episode of Shameless Reinvention, Sharon and Sonya tear down the mask of the "Strong Black Woman" archetype. From childhood nicknames like "Sonya the Faithful" to inheriting the family "fixer" role, they explore how resilience can accidentally become an excuse for the world to stop checking on you. Turn...

Last week the Obama Presidential Center opened in Chicago, and if you were anywhere near social media you felt it. Michelle Obama told a room, and a nation, that hope is not a feeling. It is a choice. And Barack stood up in front of the world and refused to sugarcoat the moment, calling people toward honesty, community, and the hard work of becoming something better. That is the America 250 conver...

What happens when your medical career path takes you through a crowded ER, a temporary practice out of a church lobby, and straight into a healthcare revolution? You do not wait for an invitation. You rewrite the entire game. In this episode of Shameless Reinvention, Sonya and Sharon sit down with the brilliant, powerhouse board-certified dermatologist, researcher, and author, Dr. Chesahna Kindred...

In Episode 4 of The Roads We Walk miniseries, Sharon LaSure-Roy and Sonya Seymour welcome four extraordinary young women — Ava, Alayna, Bella, and Mae — who traveled to the Equal Justice Initiative legacy sites in Montgomery, Alabama, and across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma alongside community leader Ms. Velma Monteiro-Tribble. These young women came home and wrote reflections that moved us t...

They are not waiting. They are not asking permission. They are already doing it big. In this episode of Shameless Reinvention, Sharon LaSure-Roy and Sonya Seymour sit down with Chase, Ella, and Nyana, three young women who traveled to the Equal Justice Initiative legacy sites in Montgomery, Alabama and the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma as part of an extraordinary intergenerational journey led by t...

What does it mean to walk the work forward? In this episode of Shameless Reinvention, Sharon and Sonya sit down with the remarkable Ms. Velma Monteiro-Tribble, a global philanthropist, connector, and bridge builder who has spent decades quietly changing the world, from funding women entrepreneurs in post-genocide Rwanda to organizing a 66-person cultural exchange to the Equal Justice Initiative Le...

What does it look like when a woman refuses to let any single chapter be the whole story? It looks like Dr. Johnnetta B. Cole. Anthropologist. Trailblazer. The first African American woman to serve as president of both Spelman College and Bennett College. Former Director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African Art. Northwestern University alumna. Champion for equity, education, and human d...

Beyoncé showed up to the Met Gala in a skeleton. Megan Thee Stallion kept the curtain up while the internet had opinions. And somehow Bananito — an AI animated banana with abs and zero loyalty — is doing more emotional processing work for Black women than half the content online. This week Sharon and Sonya are back with no guests, no filter, and absolutely no chill. They break down what Beyoncé's...

What if the person standing between you and everything you're building is an earlier, wounded version of yourself? Sharon's 25-year friend and World Trade Center Arkansas CEO Denise Thomas joins the show to talk about the emotional intelligence work that no credential can replace. They get into the inner child framework, the gift of hawk vision, integrating your shadows instead of hiding them, and...

The Long Game: Nobody Talks About This Part | Shameless Reinvention Have you ever looked around at where you are and quietly thought: this is not what I planned? This episode is for you. Sharon LaSure-Roy and Sonya Seymour get real about what the long game actually feels like from the inside — not the bumper sticker version, but the daily reality of doing the work when you do not know if the work...

You have the plan. You have the research. You have the spreadsheet. So why are you still waiting? In Episode 30, we sit down with Victoria Hairston, a woman who walked through divorce, physical transformation, and a full identity reclamation, and came out the other side not just standing but moving. Literally. She is headed to Panama, and she is not waiting until everything is perfect to get there...

This week on Shameless Reinvention, we're talking about faith, freedom, and what it actually means to hold on — through the lens of Passover, Easter, a beloved Game of Thrones character, and a sermon about weight you were never meant to carry. This one is for everybody who has been holding something they don't fully understand yet. Episode 29: Hold the Door. Listen now.

Dr. Tamara Huff is a board-certified orthopedic surgeon, founder of Vigeo Orthopedics, real estate entrepreneur, Duke MBA, and incoming chair of the Health Care Systems Committee for the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons. She started Vigeo in 2019 to increase access to musculoskeletal care in rural America — because the communities that needed it most weren't being served. In Episode 28, sh...

Have you ever looked back at the woman you almost stayed as , and felt grateful you kept walking? In this episode, Sonya and Sharon get real about the fork-in-the-road moments that changed everything. Sharon opens up about the life she was carefully engineering , all flash, no substance , and the honest reckoning that made her choose herself. Sonya takes us to mile four of the Peachtree Road Race,...

Dr. Atiya Abdelmalik, a nurse and community health leader with 25+ years of service, shares how a life‑threatening health crisis forced her to stop pushing and start listening to her body. She healed, rebuilt her career founding HCD Consulting and Leading with Wellbeing and now helps leaders prioritize practical habits like hydration, movement, nutrition, stress management, social connection, and...

What if your reinvention story deserved a standing ovation? This week, we're using the Oscars and the record-breaking film Sinners as our lens for the boldest conversation we've had yet. Because the story of twin brothers who came home to start over, built something from nothing, and refused to play small? That's not just a movie. That's your life. In this episode, Sharon and Sonya break down your...

The Permission Slip You Never Got You've been waiting for someone to say you're ready. To say you're allowed. To hand you the permission slip that finally makes it official. But what if that moment was never coming and the only signature you ever needed was your own? In episode 23 of Shameless Reinvention, Sharon and Sonya get personal. They wrote their own permission slips out loud, unfiltered, a...

Isaiah 43:19 says:  I am about to do something new; Even now it shall come to pass, Suddenly you shall perceive it: I will make a road through the wilderness And rivers in the desert. But what does that new thing actually cost? And how do you hold on when you cannot feel it yet? Rev. Dr. Danielle L. Brown, Senior Pastor of Shiloh Baptist Church, scholar, mentor, and the first woman to lead that co...

After eleven years, Jill Scott returned with To Whom This May Concern — an album that felt less like music and more like recognition. In Episode 21 of Shameless Reinvention, we step into the full afterglow and bring our real, unedited selves to the conversation. We both know what it feels like when a space keeps asking you to drill deeper — and the slow realization that what felt like encouragemen...

Episode 20: When Life Demands You Love Yourself First - Tricshone Jiles What does it take to advocate for yourself when your life depends on it? Two-time breast cancer survivor Tricshone Jiles knows the answer—and she's not holding back. In this powerful Valentine's week episode, Tricshone sits down with hosts Sonya Seymour and Sharon LaSure-Roy to share her journey of resilience, reinvention, and...

In this episode of Shameless Reinvention, Sonya and Sharon explore how to keep faith, hope, and resilience when both personal lives and the wider world feel like they're falling apart. They name the guilt of focusing on personal struggles, the weight of collective grief, and why both realities deserve attention. Sonya and Sharon offer practical steps: curate your information diet, build daily grou...

  Episode 18 is LIVE! 🎙️ The Ripple Effect — Quiet Ripples, Lasting Impact. “When the ground shifts, you discover what you're really made of” In this episode of Shameless Reinvention, we sit down with Christin Zollicoffer — a changemaker who turned an institutional ending into a powerful beginning. After her VP of DEI role at Brown University was eliminated, Christin didn't retreat. She built http...

Hosts Sonya and Sharon revisit their episode on the myth of "having it all" and reframe it through their Ripple Effect series. They explore how letting go of performance and modeling vulnerability creates outward ripples that give others permission to breathe, rest, set boundaries, and reinvent. The episode contrasts masks (performing perfection) with mirrors (showing truth), shares practical step...

In this episode hosts Sharon LaShaw Roy and Sonya Seymour interview Dee Seymore, a public health doctoral candidate and founder of Masc-OFF. Dee shares how she turned isolation into connection by creating a safe, welcoming space for Black masculine-presenting women to heal, belong, and thrive. The conversation explores reinvention, community-led public health, mentorship, and the ripple effects of...