Lilly Singh: A Media Superwoman

Lilly Singh, also known as iiSuperwomanii, has been a ubiquitous presence in the digital space since the rise of the “YouTube star.” In October of 2010, Lilly was “unhappy,” as she so says, with the way her life path was looking. She was a psychology student at NYU who didn’t want to go to grad school and follow the path her immigrant parents wanted her to follow.

So, she made a deal with them. She could take a year after graduation to try making videos on a new platform called YouTube, exercising her creative muscle and attempting to make a name for herself. If she didn’t make any progress after that experimental year, she would listen to her parents and go to grad school. However, in that year, she began to take off. As a first generation Canadian, daughter of two Indian immigrants, many of Lilly’s videos revolved around what it’s like being a brown girl.

In the following decade, iiSuperwomanii amassed over fifteen million subscribers. Lilly became the highest paid female YouTuber and expanded her presence to other forms of media, including (but not limited to) Twitter, Instagram, another YouTube vlog channel, and now an NBC talk show.

As a New York Times Bestselling author, one of Lilly’s goals was to convince the public that the digital space was legitimate work. And, as one of the first YouTubers to transition from the digital space…