Photographed by Artu Nepomuceno for the October 2024 Issue of Vogue Philippines
Photographed by Artu Nepomuceno for the October 2024 Issue of Vogue Philippines
As Canva empowers creatives globally, the digital design platform is powered by a large team of Filipino creatives. Leading the talented force is Country Head Yani Hornilla-Donato.
Step into Canva’s Manila campus and you’ll immediately recognize that it’s unlike most companies. You’ll find yourself charmed by framed caricatures and vivid murals splashed all across its walls, while skipping through a corridor with a game of hopscotch on the floor.
The Manila campus was the second to be established by the tech pioneer, back when it was an up and coming startup out of Australia. Founded in 2012 and launched a year later by Filipina-Australian Melanie Perkins, along with now-husband Cliff Obrecht, and Cameron Adams, Canva is a visual communication platform. While that may not seem all that unique, what sets Canva apart from other well-known and longstanding programs is its truly user-friendly interface. Canva hasn’t just simplified digital design, it has made it more accessible and has consequently empowered creatives all over the world.
Making complex things simple is one of the company’s core values. In Canva’s Manila campus, Country Head Yani Hornilla-Donato is leading its over 900 strong team to ensure that it continues to stay true to those values. Yani shares, “What really helped us early on was defining what the values of the company are. Mel originally wrote 13 philosophies and I was part of the team that helped distill it to 6.” She continues identifying Canva’s core values as, “Be a good human, be a force for good, pursue excellence, set crazy big goals and make them happen, make complex things simple, and empower others. You not only see these values but you feel them.”
As one of Canva’s first hires in Manila, Yani says that it was a combination of fate, luck, and opportunity that had her join the team in its early days. Fate meant that with her innate interest in visual arts, Yani was a very early adopter of Canva, using it to create eye-catching job ads for her previous role as a corporate recruiter. Good luck had Yani stumbling upon a job listing announcing that Canva was in search of a recruiter and the perfect opportunity meant that the job listing was for a recruiter position in Canva’s new Makati campus, just a block away from Yani’s then office.
Describing her first impression of the company and getting to know the team that, at that time in 2015, was composed of less than 80 employees or Canvanauts between Sydney and Manila, Yani shares, “Every interaction was just so genuine where I felt it wasn’t simply a test that I had to pass but more of them really opening their doors and having me experience what it’s like so I could decide for myself if it’s a match for me as well.” She continues sharing, “The cherry on top was after the interviews and before they were about to make an offer, the COO himself, Cliff, gave me a call. It was so personal and different, where I felt that Cliff was so accessible. I thought that was so telling of what the culture was and then when I joined, I just became even more sure that I made the right choice.”
When Yani first stepped through those Canva doors, the startup was occupying a section of one floor for its 35-member team in Manila. Today, the walls of the entire building are in technicolor with Canvanauts having taken over all 7 floors. Canva is clearly thriving with more and more Filipinos powering the digital design machine.
“Mel is part Filipina so she has a natural affinity for the people, the culture, and the country,” Yani states. However, beyond a natural affinity for our island nation and our people, it’s the Filipino spirit and work ethic that proved invaluable to its founders.
Even prior to Canva, its founders were already working with a Filipina virtual assistant and designers for their first venture called Fusion Books. It was meant to test the initial idea for Canva and see if it would be bought in the market. Yani explains, “That was one of their first interactions with a Filipino whose work ethic is so excellent, communication is really great, and that really helped them build it from scratch.” Hazel, their first virtual assistant at Fusion Books and essentially Canva’s employee number zero, along with Kate and Thea, who were among the very first Filipina designers they worked with, all became part of Canva’s initial team. All of whom are still with Canva today.
While Canva has grown with campuses across eight countries, after Australia, the Philippines remains its biggest team. There’s something about Filipino creatives that has made the Manila campus a hotbed for the design platform’s exponential expansion.
Describing the Filipino creative community and an earlier conversation between Yani and Canva’s local design leaders, the concept of halo-halo emerged. Yani explains that because of the country’s education system, many Filipino designers have a multidisciplinary background and an amalgamation of creative talent or skills that are halo-halo. She says, “It makes them a bit more creative and also just a bit more passionate in doing all of these things.”
Along with the multifaceted creativity, perhaps more importantly, Yani describes how Canva’s Philippine team is distinct for how it exemplifies the spirit of bayanihan and malasakit. “The bayanihan aspect is consistent from every designer here. The design community locally is so strong and it’s so collaborative. I’ve seen it play out internally,” Yani explains. She goes on further sharing how the strong ties of community and the deep sense of empathy extend outside their workplace with instances of Canvanauts going out of their way to even help each other’s family members.
This year, Canva marks a major milestone, celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Manila campus. In true Canva fashion, not one event but an entire PHestival Week of Filipino-themed activities marked the occasion.
As the team watched a special video message from Melanie Perkins in Australia, Canva’s female co-founder surreptitiously walked into the Manila campus and was met by sheer surprise, boisterous cheers, and palpable delight from Filipino Canvanauts. A testament to the pivotal role the local team plays in the overall success and future growth of the company, the co-founders were in complete attendance to celebrate, connect, and collaborate.
As the CEO of the company, Melanie conveys how significant Filipinos truly are for Canva. “The Philippines is a really special market for us, not only is it home to our amazingly talented team, but it’s also home to millions of people who use Canva across schools, small businesses, non-profits, and organizations to achieve their goals.”
Looking back at Canva’s early days in the Philippines, she continues sharing, “It’s exciting to see how much we’ve grown over the last decade and the huge amount our team has been able to achieve since then – from opening our first office a decade ago with just a few people, to having now grown into a team of more than 900 contributing to our mission of empowering the world to design. We’re looking forward to this next decade as we continue to empower every classroom, team, and workplace to design.”
As Yani talks about the continuously expanding team that she has led for nearly a decade with an obvious sense of fondness and familiarity, it becomes apparent that she herself epitomizes a different, modern style of leadership. Reminiscing on her own journey, she shares, “I joined Canva two years into the workforce. I wasn’t a leader coming in. I attribute a lot of my growth here. There’s a lot of self-discovery as well.”
She candidly explains, “Very early on, I realized that it’s not going to help anyone if I lead with the fact that I know most of the things because I don’t. So then, I came to terms with being clear of what I know, what I’m good at.” Harnessing her prowess in rallying people together and making things happen, while asking questions and openly recognizing that others are far more adept in areas such as marketing, has capacitated her team and given them the confidence to speak up and step up to challenges.
Yani’s brand of leadership doesn’t mean always being right but rather, always being forthright. Looking back, she says, “Perhaps I wasn’t aware of what I was doing back then as I was an emerging leader but through it all, I feel I was influenced heavily by our founders.” It’s only helped Canva go from strength to strength. She continues imparting, “As you lead more people, it becomes very clear that leadership is not one thing, it’s many things. But also, leadership is not about you. It’s about the people that you lead.” Her authenticity and approachability are the keys that have enabled her to unlock opportunities for Canvanauts, to make sure that everyone grows individually while achieving the company’s crazy big goals.
Perhaps it’s telling that Canva’s Country Head began in the company as part of a small group under what they call Team Happiness or what most companies refer to as Human Resources. Yani expresses how the team at Canva is very clear in terms of goals and is extremely ambitious in what they can achieve. While being goal-oriented and exceedingly persistent in accomplishing those goals, as I sip my matcha latte made by Canva’s inhouse barista, Yani discloses that the actual secret to making it all happen is knowing how to foster and take care of a team. Whether it’s having their own barista and chef to prepare free daily lunches, having a gym, clinic, and meditation room within their offices, or establishing Canva university with professional coaches to nurture employee development, Canva is as devoted to employee well-being as it is to customer satisfaction.
“Canva is a product but behind that product is a huge team. The culture, the engagement of the team, it reflects on the product,” Yani conveys. Personal growth and product growth go hand in hand at the tech company. She expounds on this saying, “So we need the team to continue to grow in a way that aligns with the values and the culture and then that will translate into the product growth.” Within a decade of its launch, that product growth translated into Canva not only emerging as a tech unicorn but a decacorn, having been valued at well over 10 billion dollars.
Despite the impressive numbers and the company reaching a peak valuation of 40 billion US dollars, it’s evident that what exceedingly delights Yani and the rest of the team is how Canva is definitively accomplishing its mission of empowering the world to design.
Canva has become a stepping stone to get ahead. “It’s a product that’s really helped people achieve their goals, further their business, further their productivity, or land the job that they want because of a CV made on Canva,” Yani proudly states.
The company envisions wall to wall adoption of Canva, no matter where one is in life. That means young students can use Canva for school, professionals can utilize it for their work or when they start their own business, and even retired senior citizens can pursue their passion for art through Canva. In the next decade, Canva is aiming beyond individual empowerment. With the recently launched Canva Enterprise, the company has engineered a suite of new products to empower large organizations to design.
As Canva continues to grow and offer its millions of users more artistic templates, time-saving design features, one-click functionalities, and new workplace capabilities, it’s also integrating creative AI or what Canva calls its Magic Studio, which is an entire suite of AI-powered tools. Forget simply being able to remove the background of an image with a single click. Now with Magic Design, Magic Media, Magic Edit and a whole array of magical tools, users can perform near wizardry like transform their ideas from text to images and videos.
While the company brings artificial intelligence into the picture, Yani discusses how Canva has been balancing innovation and speed with safety and security. “You want to make sure you’re able to integrate AI into the platform to help individuals and teams do their work much faster and just be more innovative. But at the same time, Canva as a company is very conscious about going back to the six values.” It’s a balancing act between empowering others and being a force for good.
I return to the Canva campus where Doreen, the team chef, has prepared a culinary adventure and the Vibe team is on hand to welcome the local creative community. The entire sixth floor is teeming with attendees eager to engage with Cameron, one of Canva’s founding trifecta and the company’s Chief Product Officer, who is present for the evening’s Creative Lab event, along with Canvanauts from Australia.
Dressed in tech’s nondescript and lowkey uniform of jeans, sneakers, and a t-shirt, Cameron teasingly begins by saying that he has to prove his own credibility in a room full of Filipino designers, copywriters, advertisers, and creatives. As Cameron talks about Canva’s history, inextricably intertwined with the early experiences of all three co-founders, what comes to light is how they wanted to build a different type of company from the very beginning.
Cameron purposefully explains how each step in Canva’s two-step plan fuels each other, creating a virtuous cycle of commercial success and positive social impact. “These two really go hand in hand because as we have built an amazing company and an amazing product, it has given us the resources to do more good in the world,” Cameron says.
Canva has pledged 1% of its money, equity, and time to giving back. This means that all Canvanauts are enabled to take time to volunteer in their communities, true to the company’s value of being good humans. Yani says, “Here, it’s not a hard choice for you to make whether you’ll work or will you volunteer. It’s embedded in the company culture that volunteerism is part of our mission to empower the world.” Canva’s philanthropic projects have not only resonated so strongly with its customers, beneficiaries, and wider communities.
As Canva continues to disrupt the digital design world, it becomes clear that the power of the platform is in the values-driven culture the founders have fostered and in the company they keep – from Yani to Canvanauts in the Manila campus and across the world. The true magic of Canva lies in its people.
