Adobe is once again a best workplace for innovators

Nearly 40 years ago, Adobe co-founders John Warnock and Chuck Geschke sought to build a company where they’d like to work themselves. From Adobe’s humble beginnings, innovation has been embedded into our DNA, steering our steadfast pursuit to craft tools for the creation and delivery of digital experiences with people who push the boundaries of what’s possible. Throughout the years as we’ve released new solutions and expanded our legacy, we measure our growth not only by what we do but also by how we do it.

We are honored to see this continued commitment to empowering our employees applauded by Fast Company, which recognized Adobe on its fourth annual list of the 100 Best Workplaces for Innovators. The list celebrates company cultures that empower employees at all levels to improve processes, create new products, or invent new ways of doing business. Adobe ranked no. 32 on the list, jumping 35 spots from last year's position and reinforcing what we already know at Adobe — when it comes to building a workplace that inspires innovation, our work is never finished.

This year’s list of the Best Workplaces for Innovators recognizes organizations, leaders, and teams that have demonstrated a deep commitment to cultivating creativity across the board and, in the face of powerful headwinds, continue to spur innovation. Fast Company highlighted how Adobe promotes innovation through talent incubation efforts that extend beyond the company through our partnerships with Sundance to support emerging filmmakers — Khan Academy to provide learning resources to underserved students — and multiple historically Black colleges and universities and Hispanic-serving institutions to help student-athletes discover careers in technology.

A diverse array of people and projects enable all the great ideas that flourish across Adobe. In addition to designating us a Best Workplace for Innovators, we are excited to celebrate that Fast Company also named Adobe the winner of its Best Workplaces for Women Innovators category and selected our Content Authenticity Initiative team as a finalist for its Innovative Team of the Year category.

A new category this year, the Best Workplaces for Women Innovators designation honors workplaces that have successfully encouraged and nurtured innovation among their female employees. The Innovative Team of the Year category highlights teams that have gone above and beyond, driving important innovations with lasting impact.

Take a deeper look into the programs that make Adobe an industry leader for cultivating innovation in the workplace.

Investing in the career development of women

Adobe was founded on the fundamental principle that great ideas can come from anywhere in the company. Over the decades, we’ve dedicated our resources to ensuring Adobe is a diverse and inclusive workplace that empowers all our employees to be curious and creative.

When we became one of the first companies to achieve global gender pay parity in 2018, our leaders recognized that fair and equal compensation was just the beginning to establishing Adobe as a workplace without barriers to our female-identifying employees being successful. Each year since, we’ve reaffirmed gender pay parity while also taking on a new challenge — Opportunity Parity, our approach to examining fairness in internal promotions and horizontal movement across all demographic groups.

The belief that gender-diversity and equality are integral to innovation guides how we support the growth of our employees. Through opportunities for mentorship and community space, we encourage female employees to grow with the company and become leaders by granting them the tools to tackle career advancements and strive for mobility within Adobe.

Our Adobe & Women Employee Network (WEN) present the Women’s Executive Shadow Program (WESP), where high-potential women-identifying employees partner with an executive to experience a day in their life, gain cross-functional exposure to the business, and network with like-minded peers

Similarly, we offer Adobe Leadership Circles — a program that provides women at Adobe with strategies that put the reins of their careers in their hands, help them build their presence, and enable them to succeed. As a result, participants have landed new roles within Adobe to foster career growth and development without moving elsewhere.

Championing trust, transparency, and authenticity

In today’s digital world, it’s more important than ever that people have a way to trust the content they are consuming online. As the world’s leading creative company, Adobe’s products have empowered journalists, artists, designers, hobbyists, marketers, and more to bring their imaginations to life for nearly 40 years. We knew that with our tools and network, Adobe could be a leader in creating and implementing a solution that empowers consumers and creators alike. The Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI) was created so Adobe could help advance the fight against misinformation and ensure creators receive credit for their work. In just three years, the CAI has grown to a global coalition of 800+ partners, including The Associated Press, The Wall Street Journal, and Reuters, who work alongside Adobe’s CAI team to develop and implement a technological solution that drives transparency and helps restore trust online.

Thanks to the hard work of Adobe’s CAI team, this technology already exists within Adobe tools like Photoshop, where users can turn on a feature called Content Credentials. Using this opt-in feature, users can securely attach provenance data to their images and track any edits made wherever they go.

“Importantly with this approach, neither governments nor tech companies are the arbiters of truth,” said Adobe EVP, general counsel, and chief trust officer Dana Rao. “Instead, by enabling this new level of transparency for digital content, the CAI is empowering people with the tools they need to make more informed decisions about the content they see online.”

Earlier this year, the CAI team helped develop an open technical standard for provenance technology and released open-source code to drive widespread adoption and implementation of provenance technology across the content ecosystem. Our team continues to work with tech companies, media outlets, non-profit organizations, governments, and more to increase awareness and education around provenance solutions like the CAI.

For more information on how Adobe distinguishes itself as a home to creators and innovators, visit the Adobe careers website and explore the programs that enable our employees to reach their highest potential.