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.

"I wasn't really doing the hands-on PR work anymore," she says. "I wanted to get back to that."

Around five months after she threw her hat in the ring for "Survivor," a casting director reached out. Her first thought, she says, was: "Wait, is this spam?"

It wasn't. Over the course of several months, Roses says she went through a rigorous casting process that included countless meetings, doctor's appointments, psychological assessments and more.

"It was a very, very intense and long process," Roses says, "and all the while I was building my business from the ground up."

In June 2024, less than a year after Roses started her agency, it was time to film. Because of her non-disclosure agreement, Roses says, she couldn't yet say she was going on "Survivor." She worried her clients would think she was "jetting off" just a few months in and that she "didn't take the job seriously."

She wouldn't have her phone or Wi-Fi while filming for four to six weeks, so she says she needed a cover story that explained why she'd be completely unreachable. She ultimately said she had a prospective client in the health and wellness business that offered retreats for people in jobs where they're "on 24/7," like her own in PR. They invited her to join one and unplug for several weeks, she explained, to help her understand how to represent them.

There was another hurdle: Roses didn't yet have the two employees she has today; it was just her. To keep her business running while its sole employee was away, she hired a former coworker to replace her temporarily. That person started a month before Roses left for filming and stayed on a month after she returned in order to ease the transition for Roses' clients.

Although it took careful planning, Roses says, she's grateful that self-employment gave her "flexibility" to participate in the show; some contestants had to take an extended leave, exhaust their PTO or even quit their jobs to compete, she says.

Shortly before her season premiered, when Roses was finally able to divulge her involvement, she came clean to her clients. One of Roses' clients had seen through the ruse from the start, guessing right away that Roses was going on a reality TV show. That client was vindicated, and most of Roses' other clients told her they watched her season.

Many skills Roses built over nearly a decade in tech PR served her well on the show, she says.

To be cast on the show the first time she auditioned, "I had to pitch myself more than I've ever had to pitch in my whole life," she says. Her storytelling abilities and experience "building a brand narrative" for clients over the years helped her make a convincing case for herself in the initial interviews.

Other skills from PR, like her knack for developing relationships, helped her bond with her tribemates, she says. Her adaptability was useful too.

Coming from tech PR, she says, "I work with startups, so being super nimble, and being able to make a new decision and shift at every moment ... that's a lot of how the 'Survivor' gameplay goes."

Roses didn't make it as far as she would've liked. "I'm much better at my job than I was at 'Survivor,'" she says. But, she adds, she had "some of the best weeks" of her life filming the show.

As someone who's accustomed to being on call 24/7, she says it was "amazing" to be without her phone for a month. "I didn't have the pings to worry about," she says. "It truly was a reset." Though she faced daunting challenges on the island, she says, unplugging "gave me the motivation and stamina to get back and really hit the ground running and grow my business even more."

Living outdoors also offered a rare chance to rediscover play. "I felt like I was a kid again," she says. "That was the biggest high that I got off of being on the show."

Since returning from filming nearly two years ago, she says she's been leaving her phone at home when she and her fiance would go for their daily walks after dinner. She's also continued reading and scrapbooking, which she did to pass the time while she was sequestered with other contestants before filming and after getting voted off, sans phone or Wi-Fi, Roses says.

"Survivor" helped her back at her agency, too. Doing press as a contestant gave her a new perspective. Now, she says, "I know the other side of it."

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