The greatest tool in a woman’s toolbox isn’t a cosmetic or a brush. It’s self-determination—the daily commitment you make to yourself and your future, and the hard work and rituals that create the foundation for that journey. Make Your Self is a series that spotlights the stories of women who fiercely embody this relentless pursuit.
"I want to be that grandma that DJs the parties," says Tiana Warren. It's a future that technically might be awhile away—when we speak, the model and radio host is 9 months pregnant with her first child—but then again, Warren has an uncanny habit of willing her goals into existence.
Consider, for example, the start of her radio career: She found herself at a studio, fell in love, and as she tells it, refused to leave until she was offered a job. When she knew that she wanted to become a DJ, she enrolled in a 10-month course despite some fleeting doubts about the investment of time and money—and graduated late this summer, days before giving birth to her son.
If anything, those moments of uncertainty—which definitely surface, by the way—only seem to ultimately fuel the fire. "In these latter of weeks and months of my pregnancy I've been welcoming the help, but in the beginning it was like, 'Don't tell me what I can't do because I have a person inside my body,'" she says. "I can do everything. I'm still DJing. I'm still modeling. I'm not tired. I'm good."