Entrepreneur and empowering female business speaker for hire Melanie Perkins was born to create. Many may recognize her best as the co-founder and CEO of Canva, an online platform built to help make graphic design easy for everyone, professionals and amateurs alike. Her story epitomizes the entrepreneurial journey using her passion, grit, and determination to overcome challenges and find success.

At 19, Melanie was in college studying digital media and was frustrated by how much time it took to create simple graphic design elements such as marketing brochures. She was helping other students after class work their way through the current design tools and creating her own extensive instruction manuals to help her classmates. Melanie knew she wanted to create her own business, so she started by co-founding Fusion Books from her mother’s living room. Fusion Books is an online platform for school yearbook design which has now grown to become the largest school yearbook publisher in her home country of Australia.

Fusion Books taught her how to sell, recruit and build a successful business. It was then she knew it was time to tackle the need in the marketplace for an online platform that could simplify the graphic design process. So she set out to create her own platform that would be created for graphic designers of all skill levels and most importantly, those with no prior graphic design experience.

But as any entrepreneur knows, success doesn’t happen overnight. For Melanie and her team, it took 3 years from the time they met their first investor to the time they actually received their first investment. She could’ve been discouraged and given up. She could’ve lost her passion for the project. Yet she believed her work had huge global implications for the future of technology and graphic design. Fast forward a decade later and Canva is now valued as a billion dollar company! Famed Apple Chief Evangelist Guy Kawasaki absolutely loved the idea and jumped on board in the early stages serving as Chief Evangelist for Canva. A year after the company launch, Canva already had over 1 million users taking advantage of the platform. They now have over 10 millions users across 179 countries.

As a keynote speaker, Melanie has many important takeaways for audiences of all ages and success levels. She talks on topics including the entrepreneurial journey, taking risks, creativity, simplifying your business strategy, problem solving and most importantly, finding joy in your work.

Would your organization like to hire Melanie Perkins as a keynote speaker for your next corporate conference, entrepreneurial summit or industry event? Contact Celebrity Speakers Bureau today to hire Melanie Perkins or another motivational female business speaker via email at booking@celebrityspeakersbureau.com .