34-year-old competed on 'Survivor' after starting her own business from her apartment and NYC-to-D.C. train commute: It 'truly was a reset'

Competing on “Survivor” is no easy feat. For Bianca Roses, some of the biggest challenges arose before she even set foot in Fiji.

The 34-year-old from Arlington, Virginia, juggled competing on season 48 of the reality competition TV show with the launch of her own public relations agency. Around the same time, she also uprooted her life, moving from her home state of New Jersey to Arlington, Virginia, to live with her now-fiance. She says she often worked on starting her company on the train between New York and D.C. before making the move.

“I’m kind of blowing up my life in a lot of ways,” Roses remembered thinking. “I was about to make all these major life changes.”

Roses says she’s been watching “Survivor” since she was eight years old and had “dreamed about going on” the show. She submitted her audition in early 2023.

While she waited to hear back, she left her full-time role at a tech PR agency to launch her own company, Roses PR. She says she’d started to feel that she “wasn’t being challenged every day” anymore. She’d risen to associate vice president and was “helping run the ship” rather than working one-on-one with founders to shape their PR strategies, as she had before.