Melanie Perkins

Melanie Perkins
Perkins in 2019
Born1987 (age 38–39)[1]
Perth, Western Australia[2]
EducationUniversity of Western Australia
OccupationTechnology entrepreneur
Years active2007–present
Known forCo-founder and CEO of Canva
Spouse
​
(m. 2021)​

Melanie Perkins (born 1987) is an Australian technology entrepreneur. She is best known for co-founding Canva, an online graphic design platform, with Cliff Obrecht and Cameron Adams. She serves as the company's chief executive officer. Perkins previously co-founded Fusion Books, a web-based yearbook publisher.


Early life

Perkins was born in 1987 in Perth, Western Australia, to an Australian-born mother who worked as a teacher and a Malaysian engineer of Filipino and Sri Lankan heritage.[3][4] She attended Sacred Heart College,[5] a secondary school located in the northern Perth suburb of Sorrento. While at high school, Perkins trained seriously in figure skating and started a small business selling handmade scarves.[6][7]

After high school, Perkins enrolled at the University of Western Australia, majoring in communications, psychology and commerce.[8] At this time, Perkins was also a private tutor for students learning graphic design. Perkins has said the slow learning curve of traditional design tools prompted her to explore simpler, web-based alternatives. She left university at age 19 to pursue a startup with Cliff Obrecht.[3]

Career

Fusion Books

In 2007, Perkins and Obrecht founded Fusion Books, which let schools create yearbooks using an online drag-and-drop editor and template library. The business grew in Australia and later operated in New Zealand and France.[9]

Canva

Perkins and Obrecht began pitching a broader design platform in the early 2010s and met investor Bill Tai during a visit to Perth. Through Google Maps co-creator Lars Rasmussen, who advised the project, they were introduced to former Google designer Cameron Adams, who joined in 2012 and became Canva’s third co-founder and chief product officer. Canva launched publicly in 2013 and has reported periods of profitability as it scaled.[10]

In 2024, Perkins described Canva's increased focus on enterprise customers and generative artificial intelligence. That year, Canva acquired the professional design software company Affinity and the text-to-image company Leonardo.Ai, and introduced the AI image generator Dream Lab.[11] In April 2025, Perkins introduced Canva Code, a generative-AI tool for creating interactive elements, and Canva Sheets. At the time, Fortune reported that Canva had 230 million users and annual revenue of US$3 billion.[12]

Philanthropy

Perkins and Obrecht joined the Giving Pledge in 2021, committing to donate most of their wealth through the Canva Foundation.[13] The foundation partnered with GiveDirectly on unconditional cash transfers in Malawi. An additional four-year commitment of US$100 million announced in October 2025 brought the couple's total commitment to the programme to US$150 million. The foundation has also supported programmes for early-years literacy and numeracy in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.[14]

In July 2026, Perkins and Obrecht launched the Global Goals Platform, an initiative intended to survey people internationally about the changes they most wanted to see in their communities and the world, to help inform the foundation's future grantmaking.[15]

Recognition

Fortune ranked Perkins 56th on its 2026 Most Powerful Women list.[16]

Personal life

Perkins and Obrecht married in January 2021 on Rottnest Island.[17]

As of May 2025, the Australian Financial Review assessed Perkins' and Obrecht's joint net worth as A$14.14 billion.[18] As of February 2026, Forbes estimated Perkins' net worth at US$7.6 billion.[19]

References

  1. ↑ "Melanie Perkins and Ginia Rinehart revealed as Australia's youngest billionaires at age 36". news.com.au. 1 September 2023. Retrieved 4 May 2024.
  2. ↑ Stanton, Kate; Griffith, Hywel (10 January 2018). "The 30-year-old woman who designed a $1bn business". BBC. Archived from the original on 28 July 2018. Retrieved 16 July 2019.
  3. 1 2 Konrad, Alex. "Canva Uncovered: How A Young Australian Kitesurfer Built A $3.2 Billion (Profitable!) Startup Phenom". Forbes. Archived from the original on 17 May 2024. Retrieved 2 November 2020.
  4. ↑ Writer, Contributing (10 July 2020). "Part Filipino Melanie Perkins now Australia's third-richest woman | The Philippine Times". Retrieved 15 March 2026.
  5. ↑ "How a Sacred Heart girl built a $1b tech empire". The West Australian. 7 May 2018. Archived from the original on 2 March 2023. Retrieved 2 November 2020.
  6. ↑ Connelly, Claire (6 October 2015). "From making scarves to building a $165 million tech start-up: Canva's Melanie Perkins". The Sydney Morning Herald. Archived from the original on 21 July 2023. Retrieved 2 November 2020.
  7. ↑ Zipkin, Nina (12 June 2019). "She Was Told 'No' 100 Times. Now This 31-Year-Old Female Founder Runs a $1 Billion Business". Entrepreneur. Archived from the original on 4 September 2022. Retrieved 2 November 2020.
  8. ↑ "Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht". Uniview. The University of Western Australia. 3 November 2017. Archived from the original on 9 November 2020. Retrieved 2 November 2020.
  9. ↑ Devine, Ruth (29 April 2020). "Canva founder Melanie Perkins turned idea into billion-dollar business". The CEO Magazine. Retrieved 10 August 2025.
  10. ↑ Whittaker, Mark (21 February 2024). "Creating Canva: How Cameron Adams helped build a $39 billion juggernaut". Forbes Australia. Retrieved 10 August 2025.
  11. ↑ Turk, Victoria (5 December 2024). "Canva Revolutionized Graphic Design. Will It Survive the Age of AI?". Wired. Retrieved 26 August 2026.
  12. ↑ Hinchliffe, Emma; Ajemian, Nina (11 April 2025). "$3 billion-in-revenue Canva is the most valuable unicorn founded by a woman. Melanie Perkins shares a look at her new AI coding tool". Fortune. Retrieved 26 August 2026.
  13. ↑ Gamboa, Glenn (15 December 2021). "Canva founders join Bill Gates' Giving Pledge to give away most of their fortune". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 26 August 2026.
  14. ↑ Ramirez, Martha (20 August 2026). "What We Know About Canva Billionaires Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht's Giving". Inside Philanthropy. Retrieved 26 August 2026.
  15. ↑ Pathak, Madhulika (16 July 2026). "Canva's Billionaire Cofounders Reveal Next Step In Plan To Give Away Vast Majority Of Their Fortune". Forbes. Retrieved 26 August 2026.
  16. ↑ "Melanie Perkins". Fortune. Retrieved 26 August 2026.
  17. ↑ Waters, Cara (22 February 2021). "Canva co-founder backs Facebook's move to ban news, slams 'stupid' tech regulation". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 23 February 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: deprecated archival service (link)
  18. ↑ Redrup, Yolanda (30 May 2025). "Australia's wealthiest 200 revealed, fortunes blow past $667b". Australian Financial Review. Retrieved 31 May 2025.
  19. ↑ "Melanie Perkins". Forbes. Archived from the original on 17 May 2024. Retrieved 31 January 2022.
  • Wikimedia Commons logo Media related to Melanie Perkins at Wikimedia Commons
This page is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.