Aliona Nica on how Adobe helps employees make a big impact in their communities

When a steady stream of people began fleeing the crisis in Ukraine, Aliona Nica knew she needed to help. On Saturdays, she began going to the train station near her home in Romania to meet arriving refugees and serve as a volunteer translator. Soon she’d gathered 20 more Adobe employees to join her.

Nica has been organizing philanthropic activities with her Adobe colleagues since she joined the EMEA Sales Operations team back in 2015 — her current role is global marketing finance ops specialist, based in the Adobe Romania office.

Nica’s inspiration for doing good, she says, comes from her childhood. Growing up in a small village in Moldova, Nica experienced war and watched as her parents struggled to give their children a better education and more opportunities. “If you’ve been there, you’re driven to give back,” she explains. “And here at Adobe I can turn my ideas into actions that make a difference in our community. It is what lights me up.”

One of Nica’s first philanthropic projects at Adobe was a collaboration with ShoeBox. She organized colleagues to donate holiday gifts for children in need. “We managed to collect over 50 boxes and deliver them to the partner charity,” she remembers.

Another favorite project was the Take a Child to a Movie campaign. For the event time, Nica collaborated with the Innocenti Foundation, a nonprofit that helps support children from low-income families. She organized Adobe volunteers to help take 50 children for a wonderful day at the movies. As part of its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) program, Adobe also gave the organization a $5,000 grant.

For International Volunteering Day this past December, Nica helped organize 20 Adobe colleagues to volunteer at Climb Again, an organization that empowers special needs children through rock climbing, By volunteering, the group secured a $2,000 Adobe grant for Climb Again.

Coming up this March, Nica and ten of her colleagues will help teach basic Romanian to Ukrainian refugees in partnership with Asociatia Zi de Bine.

Over the last eight years, Nica says she’s gotten unwavering support from her teams. “I think my enthusiasm resonates with my colleagues and managers, who’ve been on board with every volunteering activity I’ve suggested.”

The power of giving back at Adobe

If there’s one thing Nica wants her colleagues to know, it’s that Adobe employees can tap into CSR programs to magnify their good work. For every hour that employees volunteer, Adobe donates funds — like the $5,000 grant Nica helped secure for the Innocenti Foundation

“I think Adobe’s amazing CSR benefits are as important as our health benefits, but people don’t use them as much as we could,” says Nica. “There is so much good we can do if we raise awareness about all of the tools we have at Adobe to help make the world a better place.” For her part, Nica maximizes her CSR benefits by collaborating with fellow volunteers from the CSR Bucharest team to promote local volunteering opportunities and to create new ones.

Looking ahead to the next volunteer projects — and getting even more people involved

Nica and the CSR team have lots of plans for future events, and they’ll also be reaching out to employees to gather new ideas, tapping into employee networks for partnerships, and creating a CSR calendar so it’s even easier to get inspired and find opportunities to volunteer.

“It’s not just our day-to-day jobs that motivate us,” Nica says. “It’s also our human interactions that keep us engaged and loyal. At the end of the day, I think that when a company creates opportunities for its employees to live their purpose — and gives them tools to create a meaningful impact in their local communities — that’s a company you want to work for.