The People With Power at Design Software Firm Canva
The company is run by a married couple who divide management responsibilities
As Canva moves toward a possible initial public offering, the graphic design software company has a big hole: Its chief financial officer resigned in February and hasn’t been replaced. What’s more, just three of its seven C-suite executives have worked at a public company.
There’s more public company experience among people in the next tiers of management at the Australia-based company. Nearly half of the 41 leaders on The Information’s Org Chart have worked at public tech companies.
The Takeaway
• Three executives are sharing the responsibilities of the vacant chief financial officer role• Canva had about 4,600 employees as of August 2024, up 1,000 from the same month one year prior
• The company’s largest office is in Sydney, Australia, followed by Manila, Philippines, and Austin, Texas
Canva is run by a married couple who divide management responsibilities. CEO and co-founder Melanie Perkins oversees the managers responsible for products, marketing and human resources. Her husband, co-founder and Chief Operating Officer Cliff Obrecht, oversees sales, legal and engineering. The pair have been entrepreneurs working alongside each other since college. (Read our Perkins profile here.)
A third co-founder, Cameron Adams, is chief product officer. Adams worked at Google earlier in his career.
As of September, 170 million people used Canva’s free services at least monthly; another 20 million people pay for additional functions and features, a spokesperson said.
Canva’s annualized revenue as of May was $2.3 billion, and the company was valued at $26 billion in a sale of secondary shares in April (see more details in our Tech IPO Tracker). Also in April, Canva raised prices for its Teams product for small groups; the annual price for some groups increased by as much as 300%.
In all, Perkins has six direct reports including Obrecht and Adams. The others are Rob Kawalsky, head of product; Jennie Rogerson, head of people; Zach Kitschke, chief marketing officer; and Elaine Xie, chief of staff.
Adams and Kawalsky, the two top product executives, broadly split duties into product strategy and product operations. Adams focuses on new Canva products—the company is well known for its image-, document- and video-editing tools. He oversees Andrew Green, head of design; and Mike Williams, head of sustainability. Kawalsky manages a larger group that includes most Canva product managers.
Nine executives report directly to Obrecht, including Brendan Humphreys, who was appointed chief technology officer last week; he previously was head of engineering, according to a spokesperson. David Hearnden—Canva’s former chief technology officer, who came to the company from Google in 2012—is moving into a role as distinguished engineer. A spokesperson said the pivot was a “natural extension” for Humphreys after leading Canva’s engineering team for a decade.
Obrecht also oversees Rob Giglio, chief customer officer, and David Burson, head of revenue, who are responsible for Canva’s sales. Giglio—who previously held the same position at HubSpot and was chief marketing officer of Docusign before that—leads Canva’s sales to businesses. Burson has responsibility for consumer sales.
Three executives with regional mandates also report to Obrecht. They are Silvia Oviedo, head of content and discovery and U.S. country lead; Yani Hornilla Donato, lead for the Philippines; and Ivy Wang, lead for China, Japan, South Korea and India. Canva’s second-largest office—after its headquarters in Sydney—is in Manila. Employees in the Philippines are split roughly evenly across marketing, design, customer service, operations and legal.
Canva has roughly equal numbers of employees in North America and Europe. Its third-largest office is in Austin, Texas. Duncan Clark, Canva’s head of Europe—a data visualization lead at the company—reports to Kawalsky.
In total, Canva employs roughly 4,600 people around the world and has added roughly 1,000 employees in the past year.
Three senior leaders represented on The Information’s Canva Org Chart joined through acquisitions. Kawalsky, head of product, came in through Canva’s 2018 purchase of Zeetings, a slideshow- and presentation-making company. Clark, head of Europe, joined through Canva’s 2022 acquisition of Flourish, a data visualization company he founded five years earlier.
Benjamin Groessing, head of artificial intelligence, came to Canva via its 2021 acquisition of Kaleido, an AI-powered company that made tools to remove backgrounds from images and videos.
In all, Canva has made nine acquisitions since it was founded in 2012.
Damien Singh, the former CFO, left abruptly in February. A spokesperson declined to comment on the reasons for Singh’s departure. Multiple media outlets reported that he resigned amid an investigation of his behavior at the company.
For now, Chief Legal Officer Todd Carpenter, Senior Vice President of Finance Ian Lee and Head of Accounting Joe Mirczuk are dividing the CFO duties. The company declined to comment on exactly how those three were splitting responsibilities.