The Roaring Twenties is a reparative venture architecture owned and stewarded by Black women, for Black women. We are a private, sovereign entity building the pathways through which resources move—directly and without extraction—into the hands of Black women in the United States.

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Where We Started 

This work began in the academy.
While researching Black women in higher education leadership, our founder, LIGHTSEY (Dr. Dominique Kendra Lightsey Joseph), heard the same refrain across cities and titles:

“I’m tired of going at this alone. I just want to be connected to my sisters.”

The isolation was real. But beneath the fatigue was something sharper than loneliness—a longing for ownership. For spaces we control. For capital we decide how to spend.
So she built it.

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What We Believe

That the self-preservation of Black women is the foundation of all futures.
That sisterhood can be tender and strategic at once. That reparations require the transfer of resources—no strings attached—into the hands of those who have long been denied them.

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Our Governing Values

Our values are not aspirations; they are ethical standards that shape how we move, decide, and protect one another.

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Empowerment
We understand empowerment as self-determination, agency, and material stability. Empowerment here does not require permission from any institution, nor proximity to power. Black women define our own needs, priorities, and pathways—and pursue them without coercion, extraction, or performance.

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Transparency
Transparency is an internal discipline grounded in trust and clarity. Communication is direct and intentional. Transparency does not mean performative visibility or external reporting; it means sharing information in ways that preserve dignity, protect the collective, and maintain relational integrity.

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Sisterhood (Collective Responsibility)
Sisterhood is an active ethical commitment to one another. We take harm—interpersonal, structural, and ideological—seriously and address it directly. Extraction, misrepresentation, neglect, or coercion are incompatible with sisterhood and, therefore, incompatible with this house.

Doing no harm is not symbolic; it is a daily operational standard. These values guide how we evaluate alignment, participation, and the continuation of our work.

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Our Core Tenets

Everything we build is anchored in five commitments:

• Advancing educational equity

• Building financial stability and solvency

• Cultivating entrepreneurial skills

• Designing supportive mentorship opportunities for young Black women

• Examining educational, economic, political, and health-related policies and their impact on Black women

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What We Are Building Toward

We are laying the groundwork to deploy capital across four areas: restoration, innovation, infrastructure, and founder-led research and development.

We are not there yet. But every dollar received, every member who joins, every conversation held moves us closer.

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Who This Is For

or Black women in the United States who are ready to stop performing resilience and start receiving resources. Who wants more than a seat at someone else’s table. Who wants their own table, their own building, their own financial freedom to dream without translation.

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Our Standards

Our Standards translate values into practice. Alignment is demonstrated through behavior, not intent. We do not tolerate anti-Blackness, respectability politics, extraction, or energy that undermines the safety of Black women. We protect this space with discernment, not debate. When standards are violated, TRT reserves the right to intervene, disengage, or terminate relationships without negotiation or justification. Access is a privilege, proximity requires trust, and ​we retain the right to revoke access for our best interest.

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Our Accountability

We are accountable to the lives we are protecting and the futures we are building. To the members who walk beside us—whose trust makes this work possible. To the ancestors who imagined freedom before we could see it. To the little girls coming behind us who deserve a softer road and a wider sky.

Accountability here is practiced through care, discernment, and right action. We listen to one another. We repair when harm occurs. We make decisions that honor the safety, dignity, and self-determination of Black women. Integrity is not a statement we publish—it is a discipline we live. This house answers first to Black women, and we measure our success by how well we protect their ability to dream, decide, and thrive.