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The Room With No Doors
An excerpt from my memoir of the journey of being a Black inventor in America
I can’t say exactly when the anxiety attacks began. I only know how they announced themselves.
At night, the dream came.
There was a vast room with barren walls—no furniture, no windows, no warmth. Its emptiness felt ominous, threatening, as if the room itself was watching me. I sat huddled in one corner, wearing only a sheer nightgown. My eyes were wide with terror. I clutched my knees to my chest, rocking back and forth, trying to make myself smaller in a space that offered no hiding place.
I always woke the same way—gasping for air, my heart racing, my neck soaked in sweat. My body knew something my mind was still trying to understand.
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The dreams began after the meeting.
The gatekeepers had arranged it—three white men, described to me as movers and shakers in the manufacturing world. Men who could “open doors.” Men whose approval, I was told, mattered. We met in an industrial office space that smelled of metal, paper, and power. Looking back now, I know the Lord was watching over me. I felt uneasy the moment I walked in. My spirit was on alert, though I didn’t yet know why.
The gatekeepers—state-funded, taxpayer-supported—were supposed to help startups get started. That was their mission. Their brochures promised access: funding, tools, manufacturers, supply chains. A pathway forward.
But that is not what they offered me.
Instead, they extracted.
They asked for everything—my personal information, my business details, my designs, my plans. They took notes. They nodded. They asked just enough questions to appear engaged. And then, when there was nothing left to give, they sent me on my way.
What they used that information for had nothing to do with helping me succeed. It was used to justify their own existence—to pad reports, to create the illusion of impact, to ensure the millions in taxpayer dollars kept flowing. My dream became data. My labor became proof-of-service. My vulnerability became currency.
Gatekeepers are not always loud. They do not always say no outright. Often, they smile. They delay. They redirect. They drain you of information, time, and hope—while calling it support.
What they do to startups is not accidental. It is systemic. And it is devastating.
To take public money meant to support innovation, only to stall, silence, or siphon from the very people whose ideas justify that funding, is not just unethical—it is destructive. It kills momentum. It destroys confidence. It suffocates dreams at their most fragile stage.
I walked into that meeting believing I was being invited forward. I left feeling exposed, unprotected, and unseen.
The barren room in my dreams had no furniture because nothing had been built for me to rest on. No doors, because access was an illusion. No clothes, because I had been stripped of safety, of agency, of trust.
And still, I didn’t quit.
But I began to understand something essential: Not everyone positioned as a helper is there to help.
Some are there to stand between you and the future—deciding who gets through and who is left rocking in the corner of an empty room.
In the next chapter, I would name them. I would study their patterns. And I would begin the slow, necessary work of learning how to move around the gate instead of waiting for it to open.
