When Perkins started Canva from her mother’s living room in 2012, her goal was to allow anyone to be a decent graphic designer, whether for greeting cards, ads, or videos. The company was already successful before the pandemic. But features it introduced during the worldwide switch to working from home—such as collaboration tools that let people on different continents contribute to the same design—supercharged its growth, vaulting Perkins into the top ranks of tech influence and making her a very wealthy woman. She’s currently worth $5.9 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
After building this fortune, Perkins is now busy trying to give it away. With her husband and co-founder, Cliff Obrecht, Perkins has pledged to donate almost all her wealth. The couple recently announced their first pilot project, a $10 million program of direct cash transfers to people in southern Africa. Perkins promises that more will follow—an example, and perhaps a challenge, to other internet billionaires from Sydney to San Francisco.