EdTech: Canva’s Jason Wilmot On How Their Technology Will Make An Important Positive Impact On Education

Iterative feedback — Feedback is key. We need feedback from teachers, students and users. Then, we need to keep improving our tools. Our work should never be done.

In recent years, Big Tech has gotten a bad rep. But of course, many tech companies are doing important work making monumental positive changes to society, health, and the environment. To highlight these, we started a new interview series about “Technology Making An Important Positive Social Impact”. We are interviewing leaders of tech companies who are creating or have created a tech product that is helping to make a positive change in people’s lives or the environment. In this particular installment, we are talking to leaders of Education Technology companies, who share how their tech is helping to improve our educational system. As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Jason Wilmot, Head of Education at Canva.

Jason Wilmot is the Head of Education at Canva. He joined Canva in 2020 after spending the previous 17 years at Microsoft in various leadership roles focused on education. In his current role, Jason leads the Canva for Education and Canva for Campus teams, which work with K-12 district leaders and higher education institutions respectively.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood backstory and how you grew up?

My childhood was pretty typical and it introduced me to things that have become lifelong passions — technology, education, giving back and coaching football.

I grew up with two parents and an older sister in Kent, Washington. I spent a lot of time playing sports and video games. My grandpa was one of the lead engineers at Boeing which inspired my interest in engineering and math. That’s what I studied at Western Washington University, which I attended to play football. Engineering ultimately wasn’t for me. It did put me on the path to ed tech.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

In the late 2000s, at the ripe age of 30, I was coaching high school athletes at Kentlake High School. I was very relatable to them. I wasn’t a teacher; I worked at Microsoft. They asked me a lot of questions about college and life. It was a chance to build relationships with these athletes. One of the students, Mitch Harb, ended up working for a startup of mine 10 years later — after he had gone to college. Today, he’s co-owner in a physical therapy practice, HIDEF Physical Therapy. Watching Mitch from the two years I coached him in high school to where he’s at now was a pivotal moment in validating that I’m doing the right thing — working in education technology and being a voice for students by creating things that help students.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

My mother has always been a constant coach in my life. My mom did anything and everything for me and my sister to make sure we were set up for success; that we could go to and get through college. When my dad passed away while I was in college, there were thoughts that I wouldn’t continue and instead come home. She pushed me to stay in college. With every career move I’ve made, she’s been pivotal in coaching me and giving me feedback, the pros and cons. It’s really important to have that person who is always there to push you, to make sure you stay on track in tough times. My mom is always there to push me through and bounce ideas off of. Everyone needs that.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

“Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing.” — Vince Lombardi

The definition of winning is sometimes lost in this quote. In fact, near the end of his life, Vince Lombardi said he wished he hadn’t said the quote. You think Vince Lombardi is saying you have to win every game. That’s not what he’s saying; it’s about the effort. He’s pushing you to think about how you can win every day in life — small wins, big wins. You’re going to lose; life happens. It’s about how you come back from that loss and win at the next thing. If you have this mantra of winning, it can lead to celebrating the little wins. From a product perspective, we’re always striving to make the best product for students. That goal is a long game. While we might fall short in one cycle, the next cycle we get back on it. I tell my team to aim for just two small wins every day. You have to find those wins.

You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?

• Empathy — Early in my career, I wasn’t very empathetic. I was focused on execution and willing to push through anything to get it done. In order to be a successful team, you have to bring others along with you. Becoming more empathic has made me a better and more sustainable leader.
• Always learning — I always want to learn something new. When I hear about a new idea like personalized learning or AI, I dig in; I read books. This mindset has helped me learn and grow. It also means I’m always asking questions and learning from others, which helps inform what we create for students. Even on the football field, I’m asking students, “What ed tech tool did you use today? How’d you use it? Did you like it? How would you change it?”
• Trust and Integrity — If I say I’m going to do something, I do it. If someone tells me something in confidence, I keep that confidence. If I don’t know something, I don’t pretend to know it.

Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion about the tech tools that you are helping to create that can make a positive social impact on our educational systems. To begin, what problems are you aiming to solve?

Education, in my belief, is a fundamental right for all. It shouldn’t matter where students come from, what their background is, they should have access to tools to learn. Unfortunately, the reality is that not every student currently has easy access to great tools to support learning. Effective communication today relies heavily on visual communication, and we’re aware of the barriers that exist for those without the right tools in this visually-driven world — particularly in the classroom.

How do you think your technology can address this?

At Canva, our focus is on ensuring that education transcends geographical and socioeconomic boundaries. Our mission is to bridge this gap and democratize learning resources for students and teachers. We want to give students the chance to not just learn, but to thrive in an increasingly visual world. As part of our promise to do the most good we can, we provide our full visual suite of tools for free to all K-12 students and teachers around the globe. Today, more than 50 million students and teachers are using our suite of visual communication tools, and that number is continually growing.

Those using Canva are helped in a few ways:

• We’re allowing time-strapped teachers to personalize learning for each student including different modalities to spark creativity while learning.
• We’re creating engaging learning opportunities at a time when student engagement has plummeted. Even before the pandemic, nearly half of students reported not being engaged at school — a number that declined as students progressed through high school. Engaging teachers and personalizing lessons to meet the needs and interests of individual students are just two ways to combat this challenge, both of which Canva supports.
• We’re building the skills every student will need. There are more than 1 million people now listing Canva as a core skill on their LinkedIn profile — a figure that’s surged 72% year-over-year as visual communication becomes the status quo. By providing access to all students, we’re empowering students to build this skill and practice many times in a supportive environment before going to a trade school, college, or entering the workforce.

Can you tell us the backstory about what inspired you to originally feel passionate about education?

Early in our marriage, my wife was a second-grade teacher in Reno, Nevada. A student in her class shared that she didn’t expect anything for Christmas. We were newly married and didn’t have a lot of money but we bought backpacks and filled them with gifts for the student and her older sibling. We gifted them to the family anonymously. When my wife told me about seeing the student wearing the backpack, it opened my eyes to the big impact of small gestures from teachers and coaches. Today, people tag me on Twitter and LinkedIn when posting amazing examples of how they used Canva to make learning engaging, which is exactly how we want to help students. Everyday I get to see firsthand how proud people are of the work they’re empowered to do because of our tools. It’s my job to like it, share it and celebrate the impact teachers are having on students using our tool.

How do you think your technology might change the world?

Tech can help solve problems that have otherwise been unsolvable — equity, access, supporting developing world countries. In fact, technology has the ability to solve problems we’ve not even thought about yet.

What’s unique about Canva is we’re focused on using tech to do good, which drives how I think technology might change the world. To support that focus, we are providing equitable access to the best learning tools to students around the world, 100% free. In most cases, this gift finds itself supporting a traditional classroom. Technology also brings unique opportunities to help.

One example of this happened because of the barriers broken down by technology. Take the Global Employment Challenge, which helps talent in third-world countries find their first jobs and internships with Fortune 500 companies. Its director, Gerard Halland, tagged our founder Melanie Perkins in a post sharing their work and how all these young employees are using Canva. Now, we’re giving all of his interns access to Canva and have trained their trainers on how to use the tool. Technology has the power to make connections for good — especially if that’s your focus.

Keeping “Black Mirror” and the “Law of Unintended Consequences” in mind, can you see any potential drawbacks about this technology that people should think more deeply about?

One of the things I’ve learned at Canva is about being a good human. Everyone tries to be a good person. We’re not perfect all the time. Technology is the same. It’s not perfect all the time and we need to be aware of bad apples. But, if we can focus on how technology can be a force for good, we’ll have more positive impacts.

How do you envision the landscape of education evolving over the next decade, and how does your technology fit into that future?

While we don’t know what will happen, the potential of AI is thrilling. We are very close to a future where creativity is democratized; where students have greater opportunity to create and explore; where students with different learning needs can be supported more than ever before.

At Canva, we’re committed to bringing the best tools into the classroom for all students. It’s why we recently launched a suite of AI tools for students. Providing all students globally access to such a tool comes with great responsibility. It’s also a huge opportunity to ensure this generation knows how to leverage AI in their daily lives, a skillset that will soon be a workplace requirement.

Here is the main question for our discussion. Based on your experience and success, can you please share “Five things you need to know to successfully create technology that can make a positive social impact”? (Please share a story or an example, for each.)

1. Passion — Everyone on the team needs to have passion for social impact. If you don’t have the passion, it will be much harder to make an impact.
2. Team alignment — Technology is a team sport. Ensuring everyone has the same understanding of the problem we’re trying to solve as a North Star is the only way to make progress.
3. Curiosity — To continue to improve the tool we’re creating for teachers and students, we have to also continue to learn. Things are changing rapidly, which create opportunities if we’re asking questions with an open mind.
4. Simple and useful — To have a chance at making a social impact, whatever you build must be easy enough to use on day one and advance with you as you grow with the tool.
5. Iterative feedback — Feedback is key. We need feedback from teachers, students and users. Then, we need to keep improving our tools. Our work should never be done.

In the realm of EdTech, there’s often data collection involved. How do you ensure the ethical handling of user data, especially when it concerns students?

We take the responsibility of data collection and safe interaction with technology incredibly seriously. Because of how many teachers and students use Canva for Education, we’re often their first interaction with tools like AI. We’ve committed to not training proprietary AI models on any education data. We’ve also invested heavily in our trust and safety systems with the launch of Canva Shield, which includes:

• Strict privacy controls
• Automated content moderation
• Automated content moderation
• Machine learning to prevent inappropriate use
• Thousands of blocked AI prompt terms
• School district administrators can enable/disable products
• Reporting options for unexpected results

If you could tell other young people one thing about why they should consider making a positive impact on our environment or society, like you, what would you tell them?

Be passionate. It sounds cliche to say that passion makes the work easier, but it will. Figure out what you’re passionate about. There are so many ways to make a positive impact on the world. Think about what impact you what to make and where you want to make it. A long, successful career will be much easier with clarity.

What’s inspiring to me is how that passion is sparked and how it drives change. And we see examples of passion driving change in so many places.

One of the greatest upsets in sports history happened at the 1980 winter olympics. Coach Herb Brooks had to get an entire ragtag group of hockey players (who really didn’t like each other) from across the U.S. together, working as a team, to defeat the seemingly insurmountable, invincible Soviet team in the Olympics after decades of the Cold War. Needless to say, tensions were high. The U.S. team was the huge underdogs, and the Soviets had barely lost a game since the early 1960s. But passion — for both the sport of hockey and for what this game represented to their country — really carried them through.

Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. :-)

Steph Curry. I really appreciate his journey. He and his wife Ayesha have made such a positive impact on Oakland students with their work through Eat. Learn. Play. Also? He’s my son’s favorite basketball player.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

https://twitter.com/wilmotjason

https://twitter.com/CanvaEdu

Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational, and we wish you continued success in your important work.