Canva CEO Melanie Perkins
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 20 February 2026
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We meet Melanie Perkins, the CEO and co-founder of graphic design platform Canva, which has hundreds of millions of users and a valuation of nearly $40 billion.
Despite her immense wealth, Melanie Perkins says the label “billionaire” has never felt quite right. Instead, she plans to give away most of her fortune during her lifetime. She also tells us why she believes young people should be educated differently to adapt to the growth of AI.
If you'd like to get in touch with the team, our email address is businessdaily@bbc.co.uk
Presenter: Zoe Kleinman Producer: Philippa Wain Sound mix: Toby James
Business Daily is the home of in-depth audio journalism devoted to the world of money and work. From small startup stories to big corporate takeovers, global economic shifts to trends in technology, we look at the key figures, ideas and events shaping business.
Each episode is a 17-minute deep dive into a single topic, featuring expert analysis and the people at the heart of the story.
Recent episodes explore the weight-loss drug revolution, the growth in AI, the cost of living, why bond markets are so powerful, China's property bubble, and Gen Z's experience of the current job market.
We also feature in-depth interviews with company founders - like Melanie Perkins - and some of the world's most prominent CEOs. These include Google's Sundar Pichai, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, and the CEO of Starbucks, Brian Niccol.
(Picture: Melanie Perkins speaking at a conference in 2024. Credit: Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:07.5 | Hello, you're listening to Business Daily on the BBC World Service. |
| 0:11.3 | I'm the BBC's technology editor Zoe Kleinman, and today I'm speaking to Melanie Perkins, |
| 0:16.6 | the CEO of Canva, the graphic design platform. |
| 0:20.1 | In an exclusive interview with the BBC, speaking from Sydney, |
| 0:23.6 | she tells me despite her billionaire status, her ethos is to do good. |
| 0:28.3 | It's not money for me to go and buy things with. |
| 0:32.1 | It's literally to give away. |
| 0:34.1 | And we've committed to giving it all the way over our lifetime. |
| 0:36.7 | She's worried in a world of artificial intelligence, we're not equipping the next |
| 0:40.3 | generation with the right skills. |
| 0:42.3 | I think that the world that our students are going in is a very different world. |
| 0:46.8 | And it's really important that we start to tool up our students for this imagination era. |
| 0:52.0 | But despite fears, the job market is rapidly changing |
| 0:54.9 | and some jobs will not survive, including in design, |
| 0:58.6 | she thinks professions are resilient. |
| 1:00.6 | We're continuously needing to tool up and learn new skills, |
| 1:03.7 | but the actual end goal of each profession, I think, |
| 1:06.7 | actually stays remarkably similar. |
| 1:08.9 | Dealing with rejection, how a billionaire thinks and the democratisation of design. |
| 1:13.4 | That's all coming up on today's programme. |
| 1:17.9 | From a university dropout to one of Tech's most powerful women, Melanie Perkins's story is remarkable. |
... |
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