BUILD OUR OWN ROOMS: A SPACE WHERE BLACK WOMEN ARCHITECT THEIR LIVES. TOGETHER.

Why does everything look right on the outside but feel so off on the inside? You checked all the boxes, the degrees, the job, the title, maybe even the business, yet underneath you are exhausted and your time is not your own. In this episode of Build Our Own Rooms, Tiana Symmonds gets real about what it means to feel like a tenant in your own life and how easy it is to mistake external success for...

Do you ever feel like you’re paying rent in a life that doesn’t even feel like yours? You’re showing up. You’re doing the work. From the outside, everything might look polished and put together. But inside, you’re exhausted, stretched thin, and constantly trying to keep up.  In this episode of Build Our Own Rooms , Tiana Symmonds opens up about what it really takes to move from just surviving to a...

Do you know you can be the most prepared person in the room, hit every KPI, and still feel like you’re just along for the ride?  This is the quiet crisis of the high-achiever, executing flawlessly on a path you never consciously chose. In this episode of Build Our Own Rooms , Tiana Symmonds invites Black women, especially her Afro-Caribbean and Afro-Latina sisters, to confront what it really means...

RECORDED IN 2025 Did you know that in 2025, more than 350,000 Black professionals were forced out of the workforce? That number is not abstract. It shows up late at night on LinkedIn, in open to work banners, and in the quiet panic of applying to everything that moves.  In this episode of Build Our Own Rooms, Tiana Symmonds pulls up a chair at the drafting table to name what is really happening fo...

You built the business. You secured the bag. You became the LinkedIn success story everyone admires. So why do you feel like you’re living in a beautifully designed cage? What if the very freedom you fought for has led to a new kind of confinement, one of loneliness, exhaustion, and lost joy? In this episode of Build Our Own Rooms , host Tiana Symmonds invites you into Architecting a Solopreneurs...

We were raised to "chase the bag," to secure financial safety at all costs. But what happens when that success feels like an invisible cage? In this episode of Build Our Own Rooms , Tiana Symmonds pulls up to the drafting table with a hard truth many Black women know deep down but rarely say out loud. You can have a bank account that’s overflowing and still have a soul that feels complet...

What if the very advice to “be authentic” at work is setting you up to fail? What if, without the right foundation, your vulnerability does not build trust but instead leaks anxiety or builds higher walls? In this episode of Build Our Own Rooms , host Tiana Symmonds tackles a provocative headline, “Authenticity is a playground for narcissists. ” Instead of dismissing it, she leans in and uses it a...

Why do we still believe our worth comes from how hard we work? And who taught us that rest is something we must earn like a reward instead of something we inherently deserve? Those silent rules we inherited, work harder, hold everything together, never pause, have shaped entire generations. But what happens when those rules start breaking us? In this powerful episode of Build Our Own Rooms , Tiana...

We inherited many things. Wisdom. Resilience. Survival. But we also inherited something else... the belief that rest must be earned and exhaustion is proof of value. In this episode of Build Our Own Rooms , Tiana Symmonds invites high-achieving Black women to sit all the way down and confront the Inheritance of No Rest. This is not a conversation about taking better vacations or booking another sp...

You know her. The woman who answers the 9 p.m. call. The one who says yes before checking her own energy. The fixer, the holder-together, the one everyone relies on for the job, the family, the community. From the outside, she looks like a hero. But on the inside, she feels like a hostage, collapsing under the weight of a fortress she built herself. In this episode,Tiana Symmonds sits at the draft...

In this episode of Build Our Own Rooms , Tiana Symmonds unpacks the “legacy of labor” many Black women are taught to carry like it’s a birthright. She reflects on childhood mornings that started with chores instead of cartoons, weekends structured around responsibility, and the unspoken rule that rest wasn’t earned, it was suspicious. Work wasn’t a choice, it was the baseline and that conditioning...

Why is it that Black women, some with PhD degrees, are still pushed out of rooms they are more than qualified to be inside? Why is your Afro still seen as a risk instead of what it truly is, a statement of power, creativity, and strategy? So how long do we keep knocking on doors that were never designed to fully open for us? Maybe it is time to build our own rooms. In this debut episode of Build O...

You’ve followed the rules, built the career, but the promise feels broken. Build Our Own Rooms is the podcast for Black women leaders, especially Afro-Caribbean and Afro-Latina sisters, ready to stop being tenants in systems they didn’t design and start building their own. Hosted by Tiana Symmonds, former Amazon leader, this show blends the "Blueprint" (data-driven strategies) and "...