Melanie Perkins is the CEO and co-founder of Canva. She started the company in 2012 alongside Cameron Adams and Cliff Obrecht. Canva started from Perkins' vision of wanting to create a simpler and more accessible way for everyone to do graphic design. This idea came to her when she was 19, while she was teaching graphic design classes part-time at the University of Western Australia. She started a smaller-scale version of Canva with Cliff Obrecht called Fusion Books in 2008 - an online yearbook design editor based in Australia. The company is still active as of June 2020.
Perkins was born in Perth, Australia. She attended University of Western Australia where she studied commerce and communications before leaving with one semester left before graduation. Perkins was one of Forbes' 30 Under 30 in 2016. She is engaged to Cliff Obrecht. She is the daughter of a Malaysian engineer with Sri Lankan and Filipino heritage and an Australian schoolteacher. Perkins is based in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
