Melanie Perkins, the big boss of design juggernaut Canva, is officially part of Forbes Magazine's billionaire club, based on its annual list released Wednesday.
Perkins, who was earlier named the world's richest self-made female billionaire under 40, debuted at 368th place with a projected net worth of $6.5B.
In 2021, Perkins and her husband Cliff Olbrecht, whom she co-founded Canva, are giving most of their wealth away— as it's just not their "vibe".
"If the whole thing was about building wealth, that would be the most uninspiring thing I could possibly imagine," Perkins was quoted in the new Forbes' list, which she shares with 2,667 other billionaires, and only 12% (327) of which are women.
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Making progress in the company's "two-step plan" growth strategy to "become one of the most valuable companies in the world, Perkins in September last year said in a blog post that their company's valuation had climbed up to a staggering $40 billion and was now the most valuable private software company ever.
For the second step—"Do good the most we can"—Perkins said she and Obrecht were committing 30% of Canva's equity to the Canva Foundation.
"While Canva’s equity has grown, our intention has always been to use the vast majority of that wealth to do good in the world. It has felt strange when people refer to us as 'billionaires' as it has never felt like our money, we’ve always felt that we’re purely custodians of it," Perkins wrote.
With over 2,000 employees in offices scattered across the world, including one in Manila, Canva climbed to unicorn or $1-billion success for having democratized design for a skill and time-deprived studentry and workforce with its easy-to-use platform, an alternative to Adobe's creative suite of apps that are catered to professionals.
Locally, the company had been named one of the best workplaces in the Philippines and is known to be generous in its standard benefits for employees, including access to mental health care.
"We have this wildly optimistic belief that there is enough money, goodwill, and good intentions in the world to solve most of the world’s problems, and we want to spend our lifetime working towards that," she added.
