Adobe interns experience a day of learning at the MBA Intern Summit

We take great pride in our internship program here at Adobe, and not just for undergraduate students, but for our MBA students as well.

As part of the MBA internship experience interns participate in MBAs@Adobe which is a professional development program for MBAs run by MBAs, meaning that the team that facilitates and shapes the program is completely run by former MBA students that are now with Adobe. The grassroots program initially began as a small cohort of former MBA students who wanted a deeper sense of community and additional career opportunities. It started out small with lunch-and-learns and networking sessions, and quickly grew to include impactful opportunities for MBA students who have joined for the summer.

As part of their program, the flagship event is the MBA Intern Summit, where MBA interns typically gather to our San Jose California headquarters for two days of learning. The main goals of the summit are all about providing leadership opportunities, developing foundational knowledge of business strategy, and building community among MBAs at Adobe. Although our internship program has gone completely virtual this year, we were thrilled to host the MBA Intern Summit online. Here are some of the highlights from the two-day virtual summit.

Adobe’s past and future

What better way to learn about Adobe’s storied history and future vision than from our executive leadership team? This year, our MBA interns heard from the leaders of our Digital Media and Digital Experience business, as well as our Chief Human Resources Officer.

Anil Chakravarthy, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Digital Experience, kicked off the event by giving attendees a deep dive into the Adobe Experience Cloud, and answered questions about his career at Adobe, having started in January 2020 at the cusp of change.

In order to help interns build foundational knowledge of Adobe’s business strategy Anil shared insights from Adobe’s history in growing our Digital Experience business. He started with the initial acquisition of Omniture and walked through each one leading up to our latest acquisition with Marketo. Interns got to understand how each acquisition has been part of a bigger chess game to change the world through digital experiences and help our customer solve their digital needs.

Later, attendees heard from the two pillars of our Digital Media business unit. Scott Belsky, Chief Product Officer and Executive Vice President of Creative Cloud, joined the group to share his career journey starting Behance, attending business school, selling Behance to Adobe, leaving Adobe to become an investor, and then returning to Adobe’s executive leadership team in 2017.

Scott Belsky giving his presentation during the summit.

Scott emphasized that creativity as a skill will change the future of work, saying that “Creativity is the new productivity.” Through this statement and his subsequent Q&A, Scott broke down how Adobe’s Creative Cloud strategy is prepared to tackle this with upcoming product releases and how artificial intelligence and machine learning is being used to help customers.

On the second day of the Summit, attendees heard from Bryan Lamkin, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Digital Media, where he discussed what it was like working on the first generation of Photoshop for Windows, and influencing other flagship products. After leaving Adobe to pursue other opportunities, Bryan answered why he returned with a simple statement: “It’s the best company on the planet.”

Bryan Lamkin presenting Adobe’s Creative Cloud and Document Cloud strategy.

He finished up his session by shining a light on the diversity of customers that Adobe has, discussing how our Creative Cloud and Document Cloud strategy is set up for success, and how the business has grown exponentially through our products and constant innovation.

Finding career growth at Adobe

Learning about Adobe’s business strategy is only half of the summit experience though. Attendees also heard from a panel of former MBA students who all joined as interns and are now employees at Adobe. They shared valuable insights into their experience at Adobe, and how they’ve been able to evolve their careers. When answering questions about why people have stayed at Adobe, the answers were candid.

Business Development Manager, Karim Isa, moderates a panel of former MBA interns at Adobe.

“At every point I’ve decided I wanted to do something new, I’ve always been able to find that growth” said Katie Perri, Principal Engagement Manager.

“Adobe just cares about its employees and that’s really easy to see” said Jeff Merrill, Marketing Manager, Enterprise Demand Generation. “And I just really love the work. Adobe has a culture of really looking at creativity as a plus” he added.

The Summit closed with group hearing from Gloria Chen, Chief Human Resources Officer and Executive Vice President of Employee Experience. Gloria told the story of the company’s growth and how the employee workforce has changed with it. Not only that, she shared the importance of career development and how it’s aligned with the company’s values, the challenges and opportunities of the current social and political climate, and how and why Adobe is making an impact for employees. “Our core values have centered me” she said when reflecting on how she’s managing change.

What MBA interns had to say

After the summit, we followed-up with a handful of interns to learn about what they thought about the experience. Here’s what they had to say:

“Before starting my internship, one of the reasons I was excited to join Adobe was the MBA Intern Summit. With COVID hitting us hard, I had no expectations whatsoever, but I was pleasantly surprised by Adobe’s Talent Team. They made sure that the summit remained a fantastic opportunity to hear senior leadership and learn about the business, strategy, and vision. They did a great job in ensuring that the same level of experience can be provided virtually.”

— Prateek Garg, Product Manager, Personalization MBA Intern

“I really enjoyed attending the MBA Intern Summit. It was great to hear from the Executive Leadership team and I really appreciated their time and willingness to share insights and knowledge. Although the Summit had to be virtual this year, the planning team was very thoughtful in making sure that we could still get as much out of the experience as possible.”

— Jiaqi Duan, GTM Associate MBA Intern.

MBA Intern Sean Drimmel taking a selfie at home while attending the online MBA Intern Summit.

“My personal highlight from the MBA Intern Summit was having an hour of dedicated time with four members of Shantanu’s leadership team. Hearing about their career trajectories and perspectives on the business was invaluable. To me, this signaled not only just how down-to-earth these execs are, but how much they are invested in Adobe’s MBA interns”

— Sean Drimmel, Strategic Initiatives MBA Intern

“It was a privilege getting to hear executive speakers from across the organization impart their wisdom, especially as our MBA community is relatively small and their messaging was tailored for our audience. It was also one of the first opportunities where MBA interns got to meet each other, so that relationship and rapport building was invaluable.”

— Mary Yao, Product Manager MBA Intern, Adobe Spark

Stay tuned for more highlights from our virtual internship program!