Celebrating experience makers who inspire us

Innovation and creativity can combine powerfully to change the world. That’s why Adobe celebrates the people and organizations who use digital experiences to solve global issues — empowering every voice, strengthening communities, driving sustainability, and using technology for good.

Growth comes from experiences, and as the digital economy becomes increasingly important, digital experiences have emerged as especially positive forces for change. Today we recognize some of the world’s most impassioned changemakers by shining a light on a group of Experience Makers Who Inspire Us. Our goal is to spotlight unsung heroes who are using their digital expertise to transform lives, lift up communities, and make our planet healthier.

Who are they?

Anyone can have an impact on the world, and our inspirational changemakers come from a diverse range of industries. Government agencies are equitably delivering services to residents, and libraries are closing the digital divide in their communities, while companies promote access to mental health, and charity organizations deliver aid to children in need. These experience makers are inspiring all of us.

Meet the 2023 Experience Makers who inspire us

For the Illinois Department of Innovation & Technology (DoIT), improving digital services means more than just added convenience. Digitization fulfills the state government’s deep commitment to offering more equitable and inclusive access to services and information, providing the critical assistance and resources people need — how and when they need it. Brandon Ragle, Acting State CIO at State of Illinois and Acting Secretary at DoIT, helped lead a major modernization of the state’s digital ecosystem using Adobe Experience Cloud and Adobe Document Cloud. The new Illinois.gov website serves as a virtual “front door” supporting more than 12 million residents in navigating employment, health, and senior services — at any time, via desktop or mobile devices. DoIT was recently honored with a NASCIO State IT Recognition Award for improving digital accessibility for residents with disabilities by 63 percent.

Save the Children UK relies on its supporters to help children around the world access educational, healthcare, and economic opportunities. When COVID-19 forced the charity to cancel major donor events and fundraising drives — at a time when children needed help more than ever — Atanu Roy, Head of Digital Content & Experience, led a digital team that used Adobe Experience Cloud and Adobe Creative Cloud to bring fundraising workflows online, delivering compelling content at record speed. This pivot helped the charity increase incremental revenue by more than $600,000 within a year, grow website visitor conversions to donors by an impressive 85 percent, and boost repeat donors by 58 percent. Save the Children’s massive digital transformation success has moved the charity closer to reaching its goal of helping every child reach their full potential.

Deeply committed to promoting digital literacy and closing the digital divide, Hawaii State Public Library System State Librarian Stacey Aldrich wanted to support her community with resources for gaining knowledge and skills for the digital age. Thanks to Stacey’s efforts, Hawaii’s public libraries now offer Skill Finder, a free online marketplace of digital skills courses built using Adobe Commerce. Skill Finder offers residents 1,000 courses — free resources to help them build programming skills to obtain new jobs, market their small businesses online, and learn to use digital tools to keep in touch with their families.

Ben & Jerry’s is known for its thoughtful approach to ice cream — from sourcing fair trade ingredients to crafting flavors that spotlight and support social causes. Global Digital Design Lead Gail Cummings is an early promoter of virtual product photography as a more efficient and sustainable way to deliver hundreds of customized assets, without requiring the time and resources for traditional photo shoots. Ben & Jerry’s is also using data to drive creativity with apps including Adobe Analytics and Adobe Audience Manager. By showing customers images specifically suited to their tastes, the company can improve sales while drawing more attention to social causes.

When COVID-19 shut down businesses, many people wondered how they were going to stay afloat financially while their careers were on hold. Klaus Fiedel, Head of IT at the Federal State of Berlin’s development bank Investitionsbank Berlin (IBB), wanted to do whatever he could to help his fellow Berliners. Using Adobe Experience Cloud, Fiedel took less than a week to develop a digital solution to process emergency fund applications, leveraging Adobe Experience Manager Forms to process up to 6,000 applications every hour. Fiedel’s fast work demonstrated a commitment to helping people, ultimately connecting more than 650,000 Berliners with life-changing emergency funds.

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) leads the fight to protect children, from finding missing and at-risk children, to creating resources that support children and their loved ones. In every case, getting the right information into the right hands is critical to the nonprofit’s goals. President and CEO Michelle DeLaune partnered with Adobe to build a responsive, mobile-first digital platform using Adobe Experience Manager — a solution that keeps information about children in ongoing cases secure while still delivering resources to the right audiences. The new website’s bounce rate has fallen to less than 1 percent, even as traffic has grown by seven million visits. Donation traffic has jumped by 110 percent in three years, allowing NCMEC to devote even more resources to helping children.

Alma is built around the idea that care becomes better for everyone when mental health care providers get the support they need. By handling everything from marketing to working with insurance companies, Alma helps mental health care providers focus on their work with patients and build thriving practices. Senior Director of Demand Generation Carmen Cedeño believes that understanding how Alma can better serve providers is key to building community. Using Adobe Marketo Engage, Alma is delivering more personalized campaigns and sales insights — improvements that doubled new memberships in 12 months and accelerated twofold Alma’s time to market in new states. Alma also improved re-engagement with providers, reducing cost-per-lead by 30 percent while expanding access to mental health care for people across the U.S.

As a global nonprofit, tuition-free, accredited, online university, University of the People is dedicated to opening the gates to higher education for students around the world. Using Adobe Experience Cloud, Senior Vice President and CRO at University of the People, Asaf Wolff, led a bold vision to help more students receive education, and as a result, enrollment has doubled every year. Personalized experiences help reach diverse student populations around the world, growing the university from 100 students a decade ago to more than 126,000 students today. And, with acquisition costs under $60 per student, University of the People can devote more of its budget to its primary goal: making quality education accessible to everyone.

• These are just a few of the many digital experience makers who stand out and inspire us with their vision and achievements. Read more stories about changemakers.
• Want to tell your own story? Apply for the 2023 Adobe Experience Maker Awards now through March 31st.