New podcast episode: Mala Sharma on the link between creativity and career success

The Adobe Creative Educator Podcast is the place to hear leaders and practictioners from education, business, and design talk about the impact of creativity in education — and innovative ways to help students build the digital and creative skills they need to succeed in school and in the modern workplace.

In our recent episode, Creating the Future: Why Creative Students Make the Best Job Candidates, I spoke with Mala Sharma, Adobe’s vice president and general manager of Adobe Creative Cloud Marketing, Community, and Digital Media Education. Sharma leads marketing for some of the biggest brands in creative software, including Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and Premiere Pro. She’s also an advocate for the creative community and a force behind making Adobe’s creative tools accessible to young people around the world.

Listen to the podcast to hear Mala discuss how creative skills and creative thinking have shaped her unique career path, and why hiring managers everywhere say that creativity is the #1 required skill for employees. She talks about the power of technology to eliminate divides and foster self-expression, which in turn gives young people confidence in their ability to make an impact on challenges like climate change and social injustice.

Mala also explains that creative storytelling skills are essential in today’s workplace because, in order to innovate, people need to be able to clearly describe problems, exchange ideas with team members, and present solutions in visual, memorable ways. And she talks about what Adobe is doing to help young people build those essential storytelling skills, like offering free and affordable options for K–12 schools to get creative tools into students’ hands, and supporting teachers on their journeys to infuse creativity into their classes.

“Our single biggest partnership has to be with teachers, because they are the conduit to making sure students learn in the classroom,” she says. “And that’s why we have a platform called the Adobe Education Exchange. We are devoted to helping teachers find a way to bring creativity into the classroom by giving them the professional development they need.”

Stream this episode and every episode of the Adobe Creative Educator Podcast on the web or on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We hope you’ll tune in and tell us what you think.