Welcome | Requirements | Content | Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5
Welcome to the Adobe Career Academy!
We are so happy to welcome you to Adobe Career Academy, a 5-week long program consisting of career building soft-skilled workshops, engaging discussions, and interview preparation.
Within this program, we will also be offering "Learn the Business" sessions to give you the opportunity to hear directly from our Tech and Business teams! Throughout the program, you will have the opportunity to apply what you've learned and present a project presentation on Adobe Express (AX), to these teams.
Lastly, at the close of Adobe Career Academy, those eligible will receive a program certificate, speed networking, and a mock interview with an Adobe employee!
Program Completion Requirements
To complete this program and be eligible for the program perks, please note the following:
- 100% attendance for all core sessions (can miss up to 2 sessions, if emailed in advance)
- Submission of final project
You can reference the Program Completion Requirements FAQ for more details.
Content & Schedule
- Week 1: Orientation | Learn the Business
- Week 2: Project Power Hour | Making an Impact
- Week 3: Preparing for the Future Part I | Preparing for the Future Part II
- Week 4: Be A Leader | Creative Problem Solving
- Week 5: Project Presentations | Graduation Ceremony
Week 1
Orientation | Learn the Business
Learn more about our weekly events below!
Orientation
July 18, 2023
During Orientation, we will set you up for success for the next five weeks. We will review the Adobe Career Academy goals and timelines, walk through important onboarding details, and leave time to help you connect with your cohort and the program leads.
As Vice President of Global Talent Acquisition, Cortney leads the highly-capable and agile team at Adobe responsible for attracting and hiring top global talent across all levels – from interns and recent grads to senior executives. She is a proven operational leader with a passion for people, data and insights, and creativity. She has successfully developed and executed talent acquisition strategies for both early stage companies, as well as global organizations of scale. Prior to joining Adobe, Cortney was instrumental in building and streamlining the recruiting organization at Meta (formerly Facebook) to rapidly scale their global engineering, product and infrastructure teams. In addition, she ideated and built a team that is focused on ensuring inclusive interviewing and hiring practices at the company. Most recently, she led Microsoft’s Global Executive Talent Acquisition and Operational Excellence Teams, where she oversaw 70K+ hires across all lines of business and geographies. Cortney began her talent acquisition journey at Korn/Ferry with foundations in talent market intelligence and executive search. Throughout her career, she has personally led the executive search efforts for many technical and product executives and served as strategic talent advisor to the C-Suite. Outside of Adobe, Cortney currently serves on the board of the Make-A-Wish® Alaska & Washington chapter. A constant learner, she is a voracious reader of non-fiction, a beginner beekeeper and doing her best to keep up with her two sons Paxton and Shey.
Resources
Learn the Business
July 20, 2023
Who is Adobe? How does our company strategy work? In this session, we will take a deeper dive into how we operate by looking in through a technical and business perspective to help better connect your project with our overall goal. You will hear from, and network with Adobe employees to gain further insight into how large corporate companies work.
Dominique Graves is a multifaceted creative entrepreneur with a passion for visual storytelling. As a professional photographer, videographer, and graphic designer, Dominique brings a unique perspective to his work, capturing captivating moments and creating visually stunning content. With a keen eye for detail and a knack for composition, Dominique has garnered a loyal following on social media, where he showcases his creative projects and shares his expertise. Alongside his creative pursuits, Dominique is also a successful business owner of a media production company called Chosen One Productions. Where he leverages his skills to help clients establish their brands and create compelling digital campaigns. Dominique is a 2022 graduate from Winston- Salem State University. Where he received a Bachelor of Arts in Mass Communications. Following graduation, he received an internship with Adobe which then turned into a full-time job at the conclusion of his internship. Dominique works as a Social Media Content Specialist where he works with influencers to help develop content specific to the company's brand identity and create engaging content that resonates with their target audience.
Kevin Le loves working on creative problems, whether it be in tech or anything else! Outside of I work I love cooking, writing music, playing video games (especially Nintendo!), and playing badminton. Prior to Adobe, I did a lot of freelance work around data solutions and web development and ran a business to connect college students to similar opportunities.
Laura Valiente is currently a Business Development Representative at Adobe for Creative Solutions based in San Jose. She recently graduated from the University of Central Florida (UCF) with an Integrated Business Major and a Minor in Professional Selling. She was highly involved in the Professional Selling Program (PSP) at UCF and placed in many sales competitions. Prior to this, she Interned at Adobe as a Business Development Representative for Adobe Commerce through the Adobe Sales Academy. She also Interned with State Farm, worked at American Eagle and was the President of Florida DECA.
I'm Talia Stanley and I have 2 years of experience with Adobe Customer Solutions. I first started learning about Campaign during my internship in 2021 and have gained more experience working on customer accounts since starting my full-time position in July.
Julia Ip is all about building community. Her personal mission is to design human-centered, sustainable products and services that help communities achieve social change. As Product Manager for the Adobe Life app, Julia spends a lot of time thinking about how to help employees connect with their physical & virtual workspaces, and with each other. Julia graduated from Minerva University with a double major in Business (Brand Management) and Social Sciences (Designing Societies), and as part of her program, has studied and lived in San Francisco, Seoul, Hyderabad, Berlin, London, Ann Arbor, and Toronto
Yatziry Ortiz, a child of immigrant parents, grew up in Silicon Valley but was only exposed to tech and coding when she became a sophomore in college. Through the experience of discovering her true passion, overcoming an internal battle towards self-empowerment, and a life changing opportunity through the Adobe Digital Academy; Yatziry now works as a Software Development Engineer in Adobe Acrobat Sign.
Victorin Ontchya Areno, a multilingual UX Designer with an entrepreneurial background, I fuse my passion for AI, product ethics and accessibility with my skills in business administration and illustration graphic design. As a mentor, I work with disabled youth, under privilege kids and founded a nonprofit that focuses on providing access to mental health. My superpower is empathy, which I extend to both users and teammates. This quality fuels my commitment to improving UX both internally and externally, driving team growth and ensuring equal access to resources and information for professional development. I strive to make a meaningful difference by fostering an inclusive environment and providing research-based information
Hello there! I'm Tushar, currently donning the hat of a Machine Learning Engineer at the most riveting and heart-pumping team that's the Search, Discovery, and Content AI. Our quest? Nothing less than engineering Large Language Models and deploying them, with a bullseye on Express as our product. It's basically like being a part of an AI Avengers team (sans the superhero outfits and, thankfully, the alien invasions).
This roller coaster ride began when I bid adieu to my humble undergraduate beginnings in Electronics, then traded my safety helmet for sales spreadsheets as a Sales Development Engineer. I dived into my Masters in Computer Engineering at the esteemed Carnegie Mellon University.
Believe me when I say, the journey from circuits to sales, then to coding and artificial neural networks has been like a thrilling roller coaster ride. Except it is one where the roller coaster has been programmed by yours truly and the AI occasionally thinks it's a merry-go-round! To add the cherry on the top, I've had the privilege of crossing paths with some amazing folks, who, thankfully, still answer my calls.
So, if you're ready to turn the carousel of your career into a rocket ride, come join us in one of the most creative companies you'll ever find.
Project Power Hour
July 25, 2023
After selecting either a Technical or Business project track, this session will give you the resources you need to complete your project. Each track will be covering important guidelines and instructions for project submission and provide helpful tips for your presentation.
Hi, I’m Tiffany Chen and I work out of the New York office but originally from San Francisco, California. I graduated from UCLA with a degree in Economics and Political Science and I’m about to come up on my one year at Adobe as Solutions Consultant! In my free time, I enjoy baking, running, exploring, and trying new foods, listening to music, and being outdoors. Super excited to meet all of you!
Dinecia Gates joined Adobe in October of 2021 through the Adobe Solutions Consulting Associate & University Program. Prior to coming to Adobe, she worked in higher education for 12 years as a professor and a Director of Admissions & Enrollment Management. She holds both a bachelors and masters in Communication.
Franco Sanchez joined Adobe 6 months ago and uses his experience in full-stack development to deliver Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) Sites solution to AEM customers. Franco was born and raised in Monterey Bay, attending school there from K12 through college. He was introduced to Adobe through the Adobe Digital Academy and is excited to engage with everyone at the Adobe Career Academy!
Hayden Panike has been a software engineer at Adobe for 8 years working on everything from private cloud computing to large scale public cloud efficiency.
Paul Dayton started his technology career while in college working an IT help desk at a pharmacy benefits company (WorkingRx) and worked his way up to IT Manager. His next key roles included Operations Management at Sling TV, where he played a key role in launching the first OTT streaming service. Paul was also an operations engineer at Backcountry.com, BloomBuilt, and Sorenson Media, where he worked on all aspects of delivering web services for their platforms.
Most recent role was a team lead on the Storage Engineering team where he was instrumental in designing and implementing version control, continuous integration, metrics collection and storage.
Paul has a degree in Political Science from the University of Utah, 2 children, and loves to cycle, read, run, and hike.
Project Prompts
Technical Project Prompt: The tech project seeks to expose you to common industry standards in tools and software interaction. This includes code lifecycle management with GitHub, organizational communications with Slack, and common programming paradigms with SDKs and APIs. You will create a Slack App with functionality that allows the user to interact with the App. The code will be stored in GitHub as a portfolio project for you.
Business Project Prompt: The business project will allow you the opportunity to learn more about Adobe’s Experience Cloud and our customer engagement process. From personalization to commerce to workflow management, Experience Cloud has the solution to let business deliver exceptional customer experiences. As part of the project, you will pick a potential or current Adobe client and Adobe Experience Cloud solution to focus on. After researching your client and Adobe solution, you will take on the role as an Adobe consultant and work to deliver a compelling proposal to deliver to the client on how Adobe can help them to achieve their business goals.
Making an Aunthentic Impact
July 27, 2023
In any environment, it is important to have confidence in yourself. Recognize what makes you special via a Strengths Finder Assessment, and learn how to communicate it to others with authenticity and impact. One of the keys to success is being able to articulate your strengths and your achievements.
Alison Steel is a business strategist, organization developer and professional leadership coach. She has been with Adobe for over 8 years in two stints. In her first stint, she was responsible for the internal and external communications of our Chief Marketing Officer. In her second stint, she’s worked in Field Communications, Talent Development and currently she functions as the Director of Growth Success, reporting to the Vice President of DX Growth Sales & Customer Success, where she focuses on business and organizational strategy, change management and team development. In roles before Adobe she’s done PR, field marketing, event management, channel marketing, marcoms, branding and advertising. She’s been an individual contributor, people manager and team lead at various points. Originally from Windsor, England, she now lives in San Jose with her husband, cat and three chickens.
Preparing for the Future Part I
August 1, 2023
Have you ever felt lost while searching for an internship? In this session, we will provide an in-depth look at the recruiting process from beginning to end. Join the University Talent team as we give you tips on how to polish your resume, and how to ace your interview to help you land your next opportunity.
Meg Frazier originally came to Adobe as an intern during the summer of 2018. Her experience as an intern shaped her career goals and made her fully understand why Adobe is such an amazing company, so it only seemed right that after a year of recruiting experienced talent at Adobe Meg transitioned back to the University team to help give that experience to other college students. During her time on the University team, she has supported Sales hiring and now supports our Research students. Outside of work, Meg prides herself in her Jersey girl origins and will happily talk about bagels and pizza (even though she is now sadly Gluten Free as of March of 2020) and why the East Coast knows these topics much better than anywhere else in the country. Meg finds creativity to be a main theme in her personal life, spending lots of time throwing pottery, playing the guitar, arranging flowers or doing anything where she can be creative!
Rachel Dickerson has been in the recruiting field for 9 years - starting in agency recruiting placing contract professionals, then moving in house coordinating for experienced recruiting teams, and eventually pivoting into University recruiting where she has found a home for the past 6 years. Originally from New York, Rachel moved to San Francisco in 2017 as a Salesforce employee and transitioned over to Adobe in 2020. Since joining Adobe, Rachel has had the opportunity to help grow the University team internally, has helped hundreds of students find their dream jobs, and has recently moved into a management role! Outside of the office, Rachel is a lover of food, fitness, trying new things, and spending time with family and friends.
Preparing for the Future Part II
August 3, 2023
One session isn’t enough! In this continuation of Preparing for the Future, we will explore the importance of networking and practice how to leverage LinkedIn to make your job search easier. We will wrap up by discussing key resources within your own college and community.
The Art of Communication
August 8, 2023
Discover how active listening may improve every relationship in your life, dive into the mechanics of effective listening and what sets good listeners apart, and develop a personalized set of tools and strategies to improve your listening skills.
Throughout his career, Jason Franklin has focused on how to create business impact via Learning & Development. His first professional job out of grad school was starting as an intern at a Gartner rated learning and development design firm. While working on L&D initiatives for fortune 50s, Jason worked his way up to Director of Learning Solutions before starting his own consulting business. Among many other brands, Adobe became a primary customer in 2011 and a short 5 years later, Jason joined as a full-time employee. Since then, he has worked as a Sr Manager, Director, and Principal. He is currently working to address and close skill gaps across Adobe’s 29K employees.
Jason is an avid traveler, LOVES art, snowboarding, biking, and being a weekend warrior around the house. He is a father of 2 and a recent empty nester as both children have flown the coop to attend college.
Creative Problem Solving
August 10, 2023
Creativity is not just a form of expression – it is also how you think and process information. During this session, we will introduce you to design thinking, a concept that can be applied to any challenge. This interactive session will help you master introduce you to great skills to implement creativity in your everyday life.
Pam Cheuh is a member of the Global Workplace Experience Team. She is responsible conducting research with employees and translating it into Adobe’s future of work strategy. Prior to Adobe, Pam worked as a design strategist at Gensler and studied Architecture and human centered design as Cornell.
Danae Paparis leads the research arm of the Employee Experience Design team, that is part of Digital Employee Experience. She runs user research across a wide portfolio of technology and digital services that employees use every day at Adobe. Before working on employee facing technology, she ran user research for customer facing digital ecommerce and B2B experiences at Thermo Fisher Scientific, and studied Design and Social & Decision Sciences at Carnegie Mellon.
Graduation Ceremony
August 17, 2023
Join us for graduation as we recap the last five weeks and celebrate all of your hard work! Our keynote speaker Carita Marrow, Sr. D&I Program Manager, will leave you inspired and ready to take next steps as you head into your next academic and professional journey.
Carita Marrow, an innovative intrapreneur who holds the role of Senior Program Manager, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion at Adobe. With a profound commitment to fostering equity, Carita spearheads Adobe's transformative Taking Action Initiative (TAI). This multi-year program is dedicated to advancing Adobe’s Black Community and historically marginalized communities through a comprehensive focus on community engagement, advocacy, and career development. Collaborating closely with key stakeholders such as talent acquisition, talent management, employee relations and branding teams, Carita strategically collaborates on efforts to attract, and retain diverse talent into Adobe. Her expertise in Diversity & Inclusion, Employee Relations, Program Management, Employee Resource Groups, and Recruitment spans an impressive 15 years, making her a valuable creative thought partner.
Prior to her tenure at Adobe, Carita excelled as the Senior Manager of Science Education at UNCF, the nation's largest scholarship provider. During her time there, she played a pivotal role in managing high-impact initiatives, including the Fund II Foundation STEM Scholars Program, the UNCF Merck Science Initiative, and the HBCU Innovation Summit. Under Carita's guidance, UNCF administered over $11 million in scholarship and leadership grants to empower more than 700 historically underrepresented students. Outside of her esteemed position at Adobe, Carita indulges her passion for the arts by dedicating her spare time to painting and drawing.
Carita Marrow's ultimate aspiration lies in creating equitable opportunities for under-tapped communities, striving to generate pathways to wealth and prosperity for all.
Thank you for being a part of Adobe Career Academy!
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