Episode #044 · Tanyika Fraser
I Shared My Dreams; She Said I Was In The Wrong Room
What if the people who seem “good at change” became that way because life kept asking them to begin again?
Tanyika Fraser is a strategy leader and former fashion designer with a whole lot of experience in reinvention, resilience, and proving people wrong.
In sharing her story, she highlights the hidden strengths many multi-hyphenate women develop through nonlinear careers: adaptability, self-direction, intuition, and the ability to rebuild after disappointment.
Learning to Trust Yourself Through Career Change
Tanyika describes herself as someone who is at her best during change.
“I know that whatever is thrown at me, it could be really, really horrible, but I know I'll get through and it'll be okay because I'll find the path.”
That confidence has been built through experience. Tanyika has changed industries, moved between entrepreneurship and corporate work, pursued multiple qualifications, written books, and repeatedly found herself figuring out a new direction. She sees a similar progression in her ability to take on increasingly ambitious things.
“The more you step into things that are big, the better you get at handling things that are big.”
When I tell Tanyika that I've wondered whether my increasingly instinctive way of working means I've lost some of the structure I had earlier in my career, she offers another interpretation: I've gotten really good at trusting my ability to self-direct, land on my feet, and know what to do.
For Tanyika, that trust means she doesn't need to see an entire path before she believes something is possible. An idea can sit in one of those metaphorical browser tabs for months or years before its relevance becomes clear.
“If it's in my awareness, I'm already opened up to it in some way, shape or form.”
Dropping Out of Fashion School to Start a Business
Tanyika's willingness to follow her own direction showed up early.
While studying fashion, a lecturer asked the students what job they wanted in the industry. Around the room, her classmates named roles like fashion stylist, designer, and pattern maker. Tanyika said CEO.
Her dean put a hand on her shoulder, laughed, and told her, “My darling, you are in the wrong room.”
Tanyika still remembers the shame and embarrassment of that moment. She understood how design and business fit together, but at that age she didn't have the confidence to explain what she could already see.
“I didn't have the words to say or the confidence to say, but I understand what I'm doing here.”
A few weeks later, she dropped out. Her plan was remarkably straightforward: start her own fashion label.
“I've got a sewing machine and I've got a brain, I'll figure it out.”
She made the clothes, figured out labels, found places to sell them, and kept moving one step at a time. Eventually, she got her work into stores.
The business lasted about two and a half years. Tanyika could design and sell, but she didn't know how to scale an operation that depended almost entirely on her. Her days were spent pattern making and selling; her nights were spent sewing. Eventually, she burned out.
She still occasionally looks back with the knowledge she has now and thinks about what she could have done differently. She also sees those years as her education in business.
“I learned more doing that about business than I think I could have learned anywhere.”
Being a Multi-Hyphenate in a World That Wants to Define You
Tanyika is comfortable calling herself a multi-hyphenate today. It took time to get there.
She remembers earlier periods of asking, Who am I? Where do I fit? and feeling the need to define herself in a way that made her likable or understandable. Her working definition of multi-hyphenate is simple: multi-dimensional.
She makes a related distinction around being multi-passionate. Tanyika sees plenty of people who love and contribute to many different things, especially in the regional Australian community where she lives. Someone might have a day job, raise children, volunteer, and devote themselves to other interests without expecting one pursuit to explain their entire life.
“I think that there isn't enough permission to do that.”
Tanyika has also experienced the professional pressure to make herself easily legible. She talks about walking into rooms where you're expected to establish your credentials so people know where to place you.
She's much more drawn to the people whose accomplishments emerge later in conversation.
“I think that's just amazing to be able to walk through life and not have to explain who you are.”
Why People Stay in Careers They Want to Leave
Tanyika's comfort with change also makes her interested in why other people resist it.
She's walked away from good money herself. She remembers taking one well-paying job and knowing almost immediately that the environment was wrong for her.
She lasted three weeks.
“I couldn't live with myself, knowing that I wasn't going to achieve the thing ever.”
When I ask what she would say to someone who is “comfortably miserable”—aware that something needs to change while continuing to find reasons to stay—Tanyika starts with a question:
What is it about where you are at the moment that's keeping you so comfortable?
Money might be part of the answer. So might avoiding visibility, delaying a difficult conversation, or remaining somewhere familiar.
Tanyika thinks there is usually some reward attached to staying. Moving requires something on the other side to become compelling enough to act on.
That desire can also be difficult to explain to the people around you.
“Sometimes you can't explain your why.”
The thing pulling you forward might be more intuitive than logical. Tanyika believes being able to follow it depends partly on having support around you and enough faith in your own ability to find your way once you move.
What Tanyika Is Reaching for Now
After a career with plenty of markers other people might use to define success, Tanyika is thinking about what she wants to move toward next.
She wants to work with people interested in growth and resilience. She's drawn to community and to helping people move through difficult periods and make new choices for their future.
She doesn't have precise language for the shape of it yet.
“I don't know what that exactly is. So back to feathery rewards. That's what's pulling me at the moment—is being able to just help people get through tough times and make new choices for the future.”about, and kept around despite having no immediate use for them.
Mentions and links
Tanyika Fraser
For 25 years, Tanyika Fraser has helped brands and providers of critical infrastructure align strategy with human behaviour to produce clear, profitable experiences. Her career spans global brand stewardship of Tier-1 international licenses in NYC, Paris, and London, with complex supply chain and manufacturing oversight in China, through to commercial market entry for high-volume mass-market giants and global luxury icons. And more recently deep-level strategic advisory for massive technical projects, high-value community assets and the maintenance of social license in regional Australia.
