Canva CEO Melanie Perkins: Email Address, LinkedIn and Bio (2026)

Melanie Perkins at a glance

Canva CEO email address: how to reach Melanie Perkins

Melanie Perkins has published one email address herself: mel@canva.com. She gave it in her LinkedIn post about the November 2026 restructure, for one purpose: “We have created an opt-in alumni directory for departing Canvanauts to hear about new opportunities. If you’re hiring, please reach out to me at mel@canva.com, and we’ll do our best to help make those connections” (LinkedIn).

If you’re hiring people leaving Canva, that is the address. For anything else, use Canva’s channels: press inquiries go to comms@canva.com (Canva), and LinkedIn, where she posts regularly, is her most public channel.

Canva email address pattern

Her address, mel@, is a short first name, and Canva’s own press contacts use {first}@canva.com and {first}{last}@canva.com.

Before emailing any pattern-based address, run it through a verifier: a bounce hurts deliverability for every later send. All Canva patterns, domains and official inboxes are on the Canva email format page.

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Career timeline

From a Perth yearbook business to Canva

Perkins grew up in Perth, the middle child of an Australian mother and a Malaysian father, and as a teenager trained as a figure skater (Fortune). At the University of Western Australia she taught other students to use design software. “It could take a whole semester to learn the very basics,” she told the BBC; “even the simplest tasks, like exporting a high-quality PDF file, could take 22 clicks” (BBC).

With Cliff Obrecht, then her boyfriend, she started Fusion Books, which let students design their school yearbooks online, run from her mother’s living room (CNBC). It became Australia’s largest yearbook publisher, she said, and she deferred her degree to run it (Startup News).

In 2010 she met Silicon Valley investor Bill Tai at a conference in Perth. “He said he was interested in my startup and if I went to San Francisco he would have a meeting. Six months later I jumped on a plane” (Startup News). Investors turned her down more than 100 times (Fortune), and she learned to kitesurf to win over Tai’s circle of kiteboarding investors (Forbes). On the advice of Google Maps co-founder Lars Rasmussen she spent over a year finding a technical co-founder, Cameron Adams, who joined in 2012 (Forbes). Canva launched in August 2013 with $3 million (TechCrunch).

At first Perkins and Obrecht were both directors. When an investor told them to pick one leader, Obrecht pointed to Perkins: “She’s just better” (Fortune).

The two-step plan

Perkins describes Canva’s mission as two steps: “Step 1: Become one of the most valuable companies in the world” and “Step 2: Do the most good we can” (Medium). In September 2021 she and Obrecht committed “the vast majority of our equity (30% of Canva)” to the Canva Foundation, and in December they joined the Giving Pledge (Giving Pledge). The foundation had given away more than $80 million by the end of 2025, much of it through GiveDirectly in Malawi (Forbes Australia).

The November 2026 restructure

On November 4, 2026 Perkins told staff that 1,271 people, 22% of Canva, would be affected by a restructure: “This is without doubt the hardest moment in our thirteen-year history” (Canva). Canva’s growth had slowed for the first time in a decade, she wrote, and it needed to “refound” itself around small teams, with Sydney as the main home for product teams. Those leaving get at least six months’ salary, and she offered her own inbox to employers who want to hire them.

In her own words

“It was three years between first pitching to an investor and actually landing investment… and we had hundreds of rejections along the way.”

— BBC, January 10, 2018 (BBC)

“It has felt strange when people refer to us as ‘billionaires’ as it has never felt like our money, we’ve always felt that we’re purely custodians of it.”

— Note to the Canva community, September 14, 2021 (Medium)

“Every single person is going to have to be upskilling into this new era.”

— Fortune, April 11, 2025 (Fortune)

“Great design doesn’t happen in one prompt.”

— Post on LinkedIn, October 29, 2026 (LinkedIn)

“To set ourselves up for the next decade, we need to refound Canva, getting back to our roots of small, empowered teams with the freedom to make decisions, take ownership and focus on what matters most for our community.”

— Memo to Canva staff, November 4, 2026 (Canva)

Canva’s leadership

Full company profile, including revenue, valuation and the restructure: Canva in 2026: revenue, valuation, funding, CEO.