Emeris Alumna Spotlight: Full Circle Storytelling - From Lecture Room To Global Creative Journey

When Emeris Cape Town Alumna Leilah van der Schyff recently launched her book Brown Girl Manifesto in a space where she once sat as a Journalism student, it was full circle in the most literal sense. “I didn't want to launch my book at a bookshop like most authors do, as that feels very ‘industry’ and traditional which kind of goes against everything my book stands for. I wanted something more personal to me, more meaningful than just a venue. This story belonged at Emeris first. The people in that lecture room, the conversations we had and the fact that it happened on the Cape Town campus mattered more to me than being seen in a bookshop. So, launching my book felt like a proper homecoming. I’m incredibly grateful to Emeris Cape Town for giving me exactly what I needed as a student to become who I am today”, said Leilah.

“20 years ago Emeris Cape Town gave me permission to take creativity seriously. Before that, it felt like a nice idea, a luxury, a hobby… something you did on the side while you figured out a ‘real’ career. But being in an environment that treated the creative disciplines as rigorous, legitimate and worth investing in shifted something in me. I’m aging myself here, but I remember my lecturer asking us to set up Twitter accounts and to start microblogging or to fill a roll of film with everything and anything that inspired me, and, in another lecture, I created a real magazine. I loved the hands-on approach to storytelling and the encouragement from all the lecturers - this deepened my curiosity in storytelling. That curiosity has carried me all the way from Cape Town to London, through advertising agencies, tech start-ups and eventually to writing my Brown Girl Manifesto. The common theme throughout my career has always been finding new ways to tell great stories for brands - just the medium kept changing as technology evolved.”, added Leilah.

She learnt her first lesson in resilience, a theme in her book, when she struggled to find a job in her field after she graduated. It was competitive and she interviewed for many different jobs for about a year after graduating until she found a job in Digital Marketing as a Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Copywriter in Cape Town - something remotely close to what she studied. Leilah describes landing that job, her first paying job, as one of her key professional milestones.

Leilah wanted to be a Copywriter in a traditional advertising agency, making billboards and TV adverts. After her position as SEO Copywriter in Cape Town, Leilah moved to different digital marketing and creative agencies, working her way up from Copywriter to Head of Content and eventually the Creative Director at the agency that offered her a transfer to its London offices. She spent over six years at that agency across Cape Town and London offices, growing from Social Media Strategist to the Head of Content. “That chapter was huge for me: I was leading creative teams, working with major brands, and in 2014 I was selected to sit on a global steering board to help shape a product that would roll out across the entire network of agencies around the world. Another key professional milestone for me”.

After working at the London office for 3 years her role was made redundant. From there she moved into a Content Lead role at a tech start-up, where she became deeply immersed in User Experience Design (UX) and Product Design. “I was curious and I threw myself at it wholeheartedly, and that’s how I learned more about the specialism. I currently work at one of the biggest social network companies, still in UX and design. It’s been a 20-year journey across two continents, and honestly, none of it went to plan, which is kind of the whole point of my book”.

When asked what inspired her to write Brown Girl Manifesto Leilah said: “I didn’t plan to write it. It started out as diary pages - a way to document my inner world. I initially thought I’d write it for my family and friends. I was at a point in my life where I was struggling with my identity and belonging, and I just wanted to feel seen. I grew up in a family which was very loud, and I was very different: quiet, introverted, a bit of a loner. I wanted to communicate who I was and writing this book was sort of a way to communicate without communicating. It was a therapeutic process for me. I wrote a memoir about being a brown woman navigating race and identity and belonging. That is not a universal story. And yet it's the most connecting thing I've ever made. Themes of race and identity have naturally been part of my life throughout my studies and after. I was Punk at Emeris, I listened to alternative music, followed Punk culture and I was drawn to people who had similar interests. But at the time I was the only brown Punk girl in my class. It created this internal pressure to fit in with everyone around me. No one made me feel this way; it’s just inherent pressure that comes from the shadow of an Apartheid system - where you’re categorised by skin colour, so that’s the first thing you notice about yourself. I think I have always had this story inside of me, I just never knew that I would document it. I didn’t start out thinking that I want to write this manifesto for young brown girls. It just became that as I wrote. And it’s not just for brown girls - it’s really a manifesto for anyone who doesn’t feel like they fit into traditional society expectations - be it gender, race or cultural norms. Readers kept telling me it mirrored their own pain back to them - that what I felt in those moments, they felt it too. Through my writing they felt their own experiences articulated. And that’s been my favourite reader feedback so far”.

Leilah’s advice to current Emeris students and fellow Alumni who aspire to break into competitive industries and make their mark globally includes:

• “The thing about life is that it almost never ends up exactly how we intend it to be. And the key insight for me throughout my journey is that everything always works out in the end - you always end up exactly where you’re meant to be - you have to trust the process. My career turned out so different to what I wanted it to be, but I couldn’t be happier at how it turned out. I wanted to go into traditional ad making, but I landed in digital marketing by accident. And that sparked the course for my move to London, and now working with brands that I have only dreamed of working with. And I don’t think that would have happened for me, had I been stubborn and said no to opportunities that were not on my blueprint for how I wanted my career to go. My point is: just go with it.
• The other part is, stop waiting until you feel ready, you won't - and if you feel ready, you’ve waited too long. Readiness is mostly retrospective. Take any opportunity if it provides good experience or good money, or both if you’re lucky.
• The other thing I'd say is: what makes you different is your advantage. The temptation when you're starting out is to sand down your edges, to be palatable, to fit in. Working in a global landscape I can now appreciate what makes me different as my strength - you’re the voice in the room that no one thought about, the point of view that people might have overlooked, the audience insight that no one researched. The stories that resonate come from people who leaned into what made them different rather than trying to fit in.