We’ve all heard the common saying ‘when life gives you lemons make lemonade’ at least once in our lives and usually we give it no more than a shrug. I mean, we’ve heard it all before right? In the past few years, there’s been a powerful shift in the phrase. Lemonade isn’t just a drink anymore it seems, it’s become more than that. It’s become a symbol. But a symbol of what? A notable example is that of Beyoncé’s revolutionary 2016 album Lemonade; a watershed moment in the discussion of intersectionality, femininity and the struggles in womanhood—specifically for black women. It also gave way for an iconic new motif against misogyny: the lemon. This humble little citrus fruit has, in many ways, become a signal of overcoming the systemic obstacles that can stand in the way of many minority groups. Serbian-born activist and aspiring lawyer Dunja Relić is no stranger to this symbolism. The fight for women’s rights is literally plastered all over her resume. Relić has been a Youth Ambassador for the National Council of Women in Great Britain (NCWGB) for the past four years and even represented the organisation at the United Nations (UN) in New York in 2017. In 2015, she was one of two delegates to represent the UK in Australia for the 7th Commonwealth Youth Parliament—tasked with analysing and critiquing a charter on a human rights bill. Wow, right? Well, there’s honestly heaps more. Her LinkedIn profile puts mine to shame. Funnily enough, that’s one of the areas she has helped other first-generation immigrant women and girls with. With nearly a decade of incredible political and volunteer experience under her belt, Relić sat down with us at Screen Shot Pro to discuss her own lemonade recipe.

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On International Women’s Day in 2019, Relić announced the foundation of her own youth organisation When Life Gives You Lemons dedicated solely to helping first-generation immigrant women and girls. “This project will aim to help first-generation immigrant girls gain the skills and confidence they need to pursue their dreams, whatever their chosen careers may be.” As a recent graduate in law from the University of Liverpool, Relić realised she wasn’t really an academic person. “I love projects. I love people feeling inspired. The feeling of having helped someone or demystified something for someone. It fills me with purpose and excitement.”

When asked about her branding, Relić jokingly said, “I went through a phase of loving lemons. I saw it on a print on a skirt. And that started my love for lemons. I literally just ran with it. I am my brand at this point. Everyone’s like, every time I see a lemon I think of you and I just think it’s crazy, but it’s amazing. I’ve done the branding very well.”

Relić and her family immigrated to the UK when she was two years old due to the Balkan wars of the 1990s. Her complicated experience as an immigrant would later become the building blocks of When Life Gives You Lemons. Since she moved here so young, Relić has heard epithets such as ‘you’re basically English’—to this, she has criticism. She points out that ironically, “geography has nothing to do with it” and it’s rooted in the politicisation of your identity. This heightens even more so for those who have to battle against the deep racism and anti-blackness of the UK as well as for those who exist outside of the heteronormative gender and sexual binaries of our society.

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Relić told me, “I cannot explain to you how, when you’re a first-generation immigrant, regardless of when you’ve moved here [or] if your parents have moved here. You, in your home, might as well be in Serbia. I’m not joking. You literally open your door and you’re in the UK. And suddenly the culture changes. And suddenly you have to, like a chameleon, conform to how people behave here, and what is normal here. But your parents don’t understand it.”

It forces immigrant children to make a ‘choice’—assimilate to the culture you’ve migrated to and risk your parents not understanding and even rejecting it or not trying to conform at all and be seen as an outcast. As not really British. This tug-of-war that can happen with an immigrant parent and their child is something Relić is no stranger to. “You’re met with this dilemma then as a first-generation immigrant of where precisely do I belong? And it’s somewhere in between. But that’s so weird, because [sometimes] it’s not like a stable thing.” Relić is dedicating much of When Life Gives You Lemons to eradicate this feeling of ‘imposter syndrome’ in young women and help them embrace confidence.

This complicated experience with their parents, especially for first-generation girls or women (thank you patriarchy) is something Relić cares deeply about. “I think the first-generation immigrants, in general, have it really hard, but first-generation immigrant women have it so hard. I feel like first-generation boys [can] get really offended when we say that because they’re like, ‘well, we have the same struggles’ and, I completely get that, but the standards that your family holds you to and society holds you to is a completely different kettle of fish.”

When asked about these standards, Relić divulged responsibilities that many young daughters of immigrant households—myself included—have had to take on. Having parents who struggle with the English language forced Relić to grow up quicker. From as young as 10 years old, she was translating official government documents for her parents as well as writing emails to their employers. Relić explains, “You struggle with the language barrier, it takes you some time to get your head around it. If you think in two languages, and you’re trying to corroborate the two, [schools] generally don’t have that support.”

Relić made clear her frustrations at the inadequate support for young women in education. When seeking advice about writing a CV and how to become more confident, she was given a book published in the 70s and some cartoons about different types of relationships. “If this is the support that schools are providing for young girls who may be struggling with confidence and self-esteem, especially for first-generation immigrants whose parents don’t possess any of those skills and don’t know any of that, then we have a really big problem here.”

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This pressure to help your parents so early on makes childhood slip away faster it seems. Being called “uptight” at school by her peers, Relić refused to not be. “I was always so conscious that if I’d broken out of that form, that something really bad would happen, and that I wouldn’t succeed in the way that my parents wanted me to. Because naturally, as we both recognise, it is such a massive sacrifice to leave your homeland.” The stress ultimately got to her father who had a stroke early on in her life. “It was because he was working so hard. He was working really long hours, and we weren’t even seeing him at all.”

Relić passionately highlights the insane pressure that this puts on first-generation girls, “It’s just so scary. All these things are intertwined. Health, money, pressure, the expectations of you, where you should be, especially as a woman, what you should be doing, how you should behave, what’s acceptable, what’s not acceptable. And you just think, there are so many different things to think about here. I cannot be selfish at this moment. I am alone in a country with just my parents and my brothers, and I cannot live for myself, that would be the wrong thing to do. I’ve met with this struggle of ‘this would be so great for me, I know that I would love this’. But would my parents approve? And would this benefit my family as a whole? Could my family also be proud of that? Does that make sense? Yeah, it’s a really complicated and layered issue.”

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Relić has made it her mission to aid other first-generation immigrant girls to navigate this experience through her organisation. There seems so much standing in the way. So how do you battle against these forces trying to mould you? How does a first-generation immigrant girl gain that confidence? Here’s Relić’s realistic advice, “This will take you a long time, girls. But as soon as you realise that no one else in the world is like you, that [becomes] your power. That is something you can mould into whatever you want to.”

Yes, being caught in between languages and cultures can be an obstacle but, according to Relić, it can become your strength. “Do you know how much it takes to recalibrate your brain to be thinking two different ways? Now imagine completely embracing that. And applying yourself in your dream career and your dream, whatever you want your life to be. Imagine how much of an impact you would have on your own life, but also everyone around you.” What about logistics though? What may you have to face as a first-generation immigrant woman? Honestly? Relić is an example of how much you have to fight against.

Not only do you have to fight against society, but you may also have to fight against culture and even your own family. This was behind all of Relić’s achievements and something she advises you have to brace yourself for, “I fought a lot in my house to be able to go to Australia, to be able to go to the UN in New York, to do all of these things.”

“I’m really struggling with how to weave that into When Life Gives You Lemons. Naturally, I don’t want to send a message like, ‘your parents are ignorant because they don’t know any better’. They’re just scared, and they want the best for us. But in many ways, they stand in the way of our dreams and our successes. And that upsets me and I think that is specifically an intersectional issue. Because people from really different racial, cultural and religious backgrounds can be met with that resistance.”

This, she noted, was particularly prevalent when choosing career paths that don’t align with the ‘typical immigrant expected path’—being confined to four or five professions (doctor, lawyer, dentist, accountant) when, actually, there is a plethora of other industries and jobs. “Let’s open up those rules and let’s think about what other things exist.”

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It was this struggle against different forms of authority—school, teachers and parents—that triggered the creation of When Life Gives You Lemons and perhaps your own project next. “I really hate being told what to do. I can’t do this for the rest of my life where I really want to do something empowering and then I’m met with a no. I just thought, ‘well if I’m my own boss, no one can tell me no’.”

So once you overcome this ‘no’, how do you go about finding and getting those opportunities? Relić’s path, like most of us, was not a clear one. “I honestly didn’t really have a linear way of going out and finding these things. I literally was just mortifyingly, like deathly embarrassing, sending emails to anyone I could find. I got a reply from some random person on a Parliament website and that’s what kind of snowballed it. Once you start interacting in professional settings, then they’ll start telling you about things because they know about them.”

Relić advises you to also learn from her mistakes and learn where to draw the line, “I really did not have a linear way. Any opportunity [that] came, whether I understood it to be bad or good—I took it. It was all good for me. I said yes to everything. And that is my problem now because I can’t say no to anything.” When sending that email or CV, Relić has some notes for you to take.

“Every time you send in a CV, you have to tweak it to fit that firm or to fit that industry. So actually, you don’t have a copy-paste CV situation, which people don’t realise. So I feel like having a workshop through When Life Gives You Lemons on how you can lay out a normal CV and then how to tweak it to work would be great. Because if teachers are still giving [students] books from the 70s to do their CVs, they’re not going to get a job—I’m not joking.” Relić will soon be providing a multitude of resources, education and advice about how to do the following through her organisation.

However, Relić passionately told Screen Shot Pro how difficult it may be for some people to be able to follow through on her advice. “I think that it’s so important to recognise that some of these first-generation immigrant girls don’t even have the facilities to be doing stuff like this. I’m telling you, I’m giving you all these resources, I’m throwing it out there but if you don’t have it at home to take it away with you—it creates another obstacle. If you don’t have a home computer for example. So I want to make sure that it’s 100% accessible. It would be a massive shame if anyone was excluded because of that, I would hate that, that would just kill me.”

Relić has even offered up her email to Screen Shot Pro readers; if anyone ever needs help or advice, her inbox is always open. It’s important to lean on each other and to help those who are in the same boat—especially those who are even worse off.

When asked what advice she would give to her younger self, Relić has this to say, “You will go through some really low points, points that your peers may not understand, points that you are even ashamed of yourself, points where your family will be ashamed of you and you will feel like you’re so alone. Those moments will be short-lived, I promise. Now? Now I’m sitting here with my law degree from a Russell Group university as a first-generation immigrant. The first person in my family to go to university ever in our family tree. You will of course have obstacles but you do not need yourself as an enemy also. As soon as you come to terms with the fact that you literally can do anything you set your mind to—you’ll fly.”

The rising popularity of peer-to-peer social shopping has spawned an army of platforms that are giving top-rated e-commerce websites and marketplaces a run for their money. Among the likes of Vinted and Vestiaire Collective is London-founded Depop, the go-to app for gen Zers looking to post and sell (mainly resell) items to their followers through carefully curated social feeds. Here at Screen Shot Pro, we previously had the chance to speak to Depop top sellers Sooki Sooki Vintage and Mini’s World who shared their best advice on how to curate your own independent shop on the app. But because we know Pro members want more insight into what actually happens behind the scenes, we turned to Kelliesha White, Depop’s global brand and cultural impact manager, to find out a bit more about what it takes to get a job at one of the biggest community-driven marketplaces empowering the next generation to transform fashion. So, what does Depop look for in its employees? White shares it all.

White grew up in North London around what she calls “a patchwork of different cultures and influences.” As one of the most multicultural cities in the world—one-third of all Londoners are foreign-born, and over 200 languages are spoken throughout its neighbourhoods—London has been (and still is) the home of and inspiration for countless artists and creative movements. If you’re lucky enough to have grown here or currently live here, then you have no excuse when it comes to finding ways to expose yourself to different cultures and influences.

In the UK, one in three gen Zers and millennials are registered on Depop. In the US, the platform has grown 300 per cent over two years. On top of that, Depop is also the only European player to have recently entered the top 25 shopping apps by daily active users. Long story short, with such a young, diverse and open-minded community of users, it only makes sense for Depop to demand the same cultural awareness and creativity from its own employees.

Now, imagine how important it is for Depop’s cultural impact manager to be involved in all different aspects of London’s creative scene. Pretty major, right? Speaking about the impact these different influences have had on her own way of thinking, White further explained, “It really helped to shape my thinking and I believe it’s something that’s aided my journey as a cultural marketer. If I had to describe myself, I would probably say that the words that resonate the most are empathic, charismatic and inquisitive. From a very young age, I’ve questioned the world around me and I’ve always tried to find understanding through different life experiences and the lens of my peers.”

When asked about how she would describe her current position at Depop, White told me, “In one sentence, I would say that I help to make meaningful connections with our audience through cultural and community insights as well as impactful storytelling.” Because of the nature of her role, White’s interests ultimately had to revolve around culture and the way it is constantly evolving through a swarm of distinct influences, from artists and musicians to history and online influencers. Being aware of the world that surrounds you and the changes it undergoes, as well as the reasons behind them, is key to landing a job in any creative environment.

It can be hard for young jobseekers, especially those looking to go into creative industries, to define what additional skills they can bring to a specific role they apply for. Which life-long hobbies are actually worth mentioning (and keeping up with) when your goal is to work at Depop? For years now, the next generation of workers has been fed advice that doesn’t necessarily apply to the new industries that have blown up in the last few decades. As a result, many of us are left unsure of which skills to develop—advanced Excel skills or writing fanfiction?—when it all comes down to the role we want to pursue.

“Growing up, I was always creative and I loved clothes. I would beg my mum for new clothes for non-uniform days. I studied fashion at GCSE and then fashion business at college. It all came really easy to me and I loved the idea of marketing communications being at the intersection of creativity and business,” shared White. Although she didn’t have close examples of people working in the creative industry growing up, White simply knew that’s where she wanted to be.

Speaking about the different hobbies she would advise people looking to work in the fashion and creative industries to show interest in, White said, “One of the most important things that helped my thinking was reading. Books, articles, research reports—they all help to widen your understanding of people and the world.”

If you don’t have the chance of living in such a diverse city as London, then make sure you read all about it—be that in books or online. If you do, “get out there and do work experience across various different creative disciplines,” White continued. “Build your network and put yourself in rooms where you can learn from people. If you’re a creative person the chances are that you’re good at a number of different things, gain experience in them all so you have an understanding of what you love.”

White studied marketing at Brunel University “because it was a combination of creative thinking and entrepreneurship.” She shared with me how she “used to love writing and this led me to work at GUAP, which gave me the confidence to know that I could do well in the creative industry.”

As GUAP’s previous arts and culture editor, White’s career journey clearly highlights the link between fashion apps such as Depop and their impact on our culture (and the trends we follow) as a whole. Looking back on it, she agreed that her role at GUAP was a natural precedence to her current position at Depop, “Everything happens for a reason, and my time at GUAP was my foundational years in understanding how to navigate the industry. Being a part of GUAP opened my eyes to a world that I didn’t know was possible. Being at the core of a culture that is pushing boundaries and setting new rules was so empowering. GUAP has become a powerhouse and that’s because they stay true to who they are and carved a space for themselves in an industry that once never welcomed us at the table.”

White’s experience at GUAP—along with her previous roles at the agency NERDS—allowed her to further develop her skills for her current position as Depop’s global brand and cultural impact manager. “My daily tasks vary. Sometimes, I could be writing a brief for a creative project, running a campaign or looking at creatives to deliver a project. Other days, I could be going through content edits or taking meetings with brands and agencies. The skills that I think are most needed in my role are organisation skills, strategic thinking and being collaborative.”

When asked about her favourite aspect of her job, White shared that working with grassroots creative is at the top of her list. “I’m currently working with an up and coming photographer/director in Los Angeles and it’s been magical seeing how passionate they are about the work and giving them the autonomy to create some cool shit.”

With more than 26 million registered users in over 147 countries, and 90 per cent of its active users being under the age of 26, Depop is known for successfully bridging the gap between culture and brand through the usage of authentic storytelling as well as the lens of novel perspectives. By working with global brands and grassroots on campaigns that span across social media, product launches, brand sponsorships and culture marketing, White’s diverse influences have not only allowed her to be the best at what she does but also to further widen the app’s cultural impact.

This Level Up’s aim is to highlight White’s multidisciplinary qualities as well as her career at Depop (and how she got there) in order to offer you real advice on the types of jobs you’re actually interested in. That’s why we asked the pro to share her top tips for anyone looking to start a career in the same industry. “We all create our own luck. The energy that you put out into the world is what will be returned and actively working towards your goals is important. Create a one, three and five-year plan and believe in your journey,” White first stated.

“Never watch someone else’s path and compare yourself. Learn to understand how your life experiences have shaped your view of the world and apply this to everything you do,” she continued. “Break down the skills you’ve gained in all previous experiences and learn how to position them as transferable skills for the next role.”

Inspiration is also another important part of building up your skills and getting to know what it takes to make a name for yourself. To conclude our conversation, White told Screen Shot Pro who she turns to for inspiration, “My peers inspire me, people like GUAP’s founders Ibrahim [Kamara] and Jide [Adetunji], my close friend Taisha Johnson who’s a music manager, Navi Ahluwalia, Shannie Mears, Ayo [Fagbemi] and Nate [Agbetu] the founders of Play Nice. They’re all breaking boundaries and carving their own paths. It’s inspiring being around so much greatness.”

So, are you ready to help create a better future?