When Emma Grede was growing up in Plaistow, east London, the “predetermined path” for girls like her, she says, was to “become a DJ’s girlfriend or a footballer’s sidepiece, or marry a gangster”.
The idea of success – let alone the multimillion-dollar version of success – on her own terms didn’t seem like a particularly realistic aspiration. The fact that she dropped out of secondary school and then college didn’t bode all that well either.
