Everyone is asking whether Cheyenne Bryant lied about her credentials. I'm asking a different question: what kind of environment makes that lie work?

This episode sits at the intersection of anti-intellectualism, media literacy collapse, AI, and the brutal paradox Black women face as the most educated demographic in the country who are still systematically undervalued. I bring in Baudrillard, break down the Amanda Seales and Maya Angelou comparison, and get honest about what it actually costs to earn the title.

Companion essay: https://thenetworkingdr.substack.com/p/the-weight-of-the-title

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I spent years interviewing Black women entrepreneurs for my doctoral research at Pepperdine. I asked them about their networks, their decisions, their wins and losses. I wrote 387 pages about how they build and sustain businesses. And then I left my role as Senior Director at a small business and launched my own consultancy. This episode is about what that transition actually looks like when you stop studying it and start living it. I talk about the career arc that brought me here, from a global consultancy to a small business to my own firm. I talk about what The BOW Institute has taught me as a training participant, and why being in a room with founders who are building, not performing, has been one of the most grounding parts of this process. If you are considering the leap from someone else's org chart to your own, this one is for yo