Homeroom with Sal & Mala Sharma - Wednesday, May 5

Hi everyone! Sal Khan here from Khan Academy. Welcome to the homeroom live stream. A very exciting conversation today! We have Mala Sharma, who is the VP and GM of Creative Cloud at Adobe. But before we jump into that conversation, I will give some of our standard announcements first.

A reminder that Khan Academy is a not-for-profit organization. We can only exist through donations from folks like yourself. So if you're in a position to do so, please think about making a donation at khanacademy.org/donate. I also want to give a special shout-out to several organizations that stepped up during the pandemic when they realized that we were running at a bigger deficit than normal because of all the server costs and our desire to accelerate content to support tens of millions of learners around the world. So special thanks to Bank of America, T, google.org, Novartis, Fastly, and General Motors.

I also want to give a special shout-out to Adobe. This is a new thing that we are announcing right now, and one of the reasons why Mala is here, amongst many others, as our creativity partner. We're going to be talking a lot more about just education and the role that creativity has to play and how Khan Academy and Adobe hope to work together to really push the envelope there.

Last but not least, we want to remind everyone that there's a version of this that you can get wherever you get your podcast, Homeroom with Sal, the podcast. So with that, I'm excited to introduce Mala Sharma, VP and GM of Adobe Creative Cloud. Mala, great to see you!

It's great to see you too, Sal. Thank you so much for having me here!

Well, there's a ton of stuff I want to talk to you about and ask you about. I know you care deeply about education, it's Teacher Appreciation Week. I want to learn about your journey, and of course, I want to talk about what we are now going to be doing together: Adobe and Khan Academy. But maybe a good place to start, just for people to understand context, what is the Adobe Creative Cloud and what does the VP and General Manager of Adobe Creative Cloud do?

So Adobe Creative Cloud is the creativity platform that anybody can use who has an idea to put out there in the world. We have professionals who use it, we have students, we have consumers like you and I who have an idea and want to have an impact in the world. It has applications like Photoshop, Premiere Pro, InDesign, Illustrator—applications that work on the desktop, on your mobile phone, on the web. Adobe Spark is a part of Creative Cloud that is a web-based application.

Not only does it have applications, it also has services integrated, so you can collaborate on Creative Cloud. You have content you can use, you have templates, and you have fonts that you can bring into your creation. So think about anything you need to express an idea that is available within Creative Cloud.

What I do at Adobe? I have the privilege of managing the product marketing organization and the education business. So I'm responsible for thinking about how do we get our products more available to our customers? How do we grow the business? How do we make them more accessible to users wherever they are, any part of the world, any platform that they are on? I work with product teams, engineering teams, marketing teams to get the product out there and available to our customers.

Yeah, and I've always had a long relationship with many of those products. I use them now, but you know, all the way back, I think it was as early as 1991 or 1992 when I was the art editor and layout editor for our school newspaper in New Orleans under Miss Kennedy, who is one of the teachers that I always make a point of appreciating during Teacher Appreciation Week. She was our journalism and our English teacher.

But that's when I first used what is now part of the Adobe Creative Cloud. But I used all of the various things in the Adobe suite. You know, I'm curious, how do you all, how do you and how does Adobe, you know, there's a lot of areas where Adobe is used—obviously a lot of designers, creative professionals, etc. What is the lens that you all take on education and education in the context of supporting teachers especially?

Yeah, education is very important from a couple of perspectives. First of all, we believe that all of us as humans are innately creative, and giving everybody a voice is an important part of building self-worth, building great citizens in the world. Therefore, education is a conduit, is a very important vertical for us to get students access to our products so that they can tell their stories.

We have so many infinite examples of where students, when they're able to put these stories together and put a voice to their ideas, what it does to their self-confidence and what it does to student outcomes specifically. So a big part of our focus is getting the products in the hands of these students, making them work on platforms that students are on—whether they're on the web, whether they're on mobile devices, or they're in the lab.

It's about making the products work here in these different places, making it affordable for schools. Adobe Spark is free for students to use. Creative Cloud, which is over six hundred dollars a year, is just five dollars a year for students in K-12. So really, it's about making the products work as well as making them accessible through pricing.

But the second area, Sal, is about the teachers. And again, it's great to be here with you during Teacher Appreciation Week announcing this partnership because teachers are where it makes way. This all happens. They are the ones who sort of help lead the students through the learning process. Making them ready to bring creativity into the classroom is another really important piece of what Adobe does. We have a platform called Adobe Education Exchange. There are over a million teachers on that platform, sharing ideas with each other.

There are project plans, there are lesson plans available for them on how they can bring creativity into a math class or into a science class or a geography class. Because what that does is, one, it makes learning more interesting, it engages students, but most importantly, the teachers can assess what the student has actually comprehended and learned through what they create. So education to us is about making both of those things possible: putting the products in the hands of the students and preparing the teachers to teach creativity and bring creativity into the classroom.

And I definitely want to talk a lot more about this, especially what both Adobe and Khan Academy hope to do together. But before we go there, I do want to focus a little bit on your story. That's one of the interesting things about these conversations. I always love to learn how people got to where they're going. We have a lot of young people who are watching this, a lot of parents who are watching this. So, when you were young, in elementary school, middle school, did you say, "I, Mala Sharma, am going to be a VP and GM of Adobe Creative Cloud"? What did you think you were going to do, maybe it was that?

Oh my gosh! Well, if you ask my mom, she probably thought I was up to no good. I was a very, very naughty student and was always, you know, the person who was trying to distract the teacher in the classroom and distract the students in the classroom. But no, I certainly had been curious.

I’m sorry, do you remember what you did?

Oh my gosh! I don't know if the parents and teachers would appreciate this, but I used to be the student who would sit at the back of the classroom and, you know, throw little airplanes. This is what we did in India: we made airplanes with, you know, paper, and we threw them out in front of the classrooms. I would chew chalk and then, you know, throw chalk at different students. That was really bad.

No chalk? That's a new one! I did not know that!

That's the thing! Oh my god! Yes, I was very naughty! But at some point… sorry...

No, no, go ahead!

Now I'm going to say, you know, but clearly, you evolved! You're going to say it, but at some point, please keep going!

Yes. At some point, I think I realized that it was important for me to pay attention to learning, and I think my mother being a schoolteacher was part of that.

Really, I think the way I’d sum it up, Sal, it’s a sequence of events that I didn't expect would happen, but happened. But I think the learning that I had from my teachers, from my parents, from the elders around me was to be ready to embrace them and be prepared for them. Be able to, you know, not just embrace them from the standpoint of accepting what happened, but embrace them and take them forward. You know, there's been lots of ups and downs in my journey to get to here, but what's been consistent is being confident, having a deep sense of self-worth, and a deep sense of confidence that if somebody presents something to me, I can embrace it. And I think that comes from the learning and the teachers around me and all the examples that were around me that gave me that confidence.

Yeah, so, I mean, going back to your original example, your mother was a teacher, and it sounds like at a young age, or maybe you were not the most obedient child, at least in the classroom. Do you remember when it kind of clicked in you? Was there a particular moment? Clearly your mother is a teacher who played a big role in your life if we're thinking about Teacher Appreciation Week. But were there moments in your education where you started saying, “Wow, this is really interesting! I’m passionate about this,” or “This person is really invested in me?”

Yeah, I think what my mom did for us was not just about what we learned in the classroom, but she also encouraged us to do different kinds of learning. So she put us into theater. I was learning; I was on stage at an early stage. I was learning Indian classical music. I was learning a rowing and a variety of different experiences that taught me consistently that when I practiced and when I learned from people who knew more than me and who were better than me and I observed what they did, I was able to incorporate that learning into whatever I was practicing.

I think it was the extracurricular activities and the interest that those teachers and those mentors took in me that helped me get better, and I was able to apply that into the classroom as well. And I think from a teacher's standpoint, when it came to just regular studies, it was a biology teacher who I had in, I think, seventh grade. She really made learning incredibly interesting, and this is, again, many, many years back in India in a government school where I was learning, and the resources were limited.

But the teacher made it interesting by making us, you know, take walks, helping students get together in groups and have conversations about the different plants we saw, the different insects we saw, you know, bringing art by having us draw what we were seeing. I think all of that and the interest that she took in making it fun and making it non-monotonous and surprising is what engaged me and helped me get more interested in learning. And then when I started seeing the results of what I was doing, I think, you know, got me more serious about continuing to do my studies.

I'm always curious because, you know, when I remember when I was in high school and even in college, you see people whose careers are mid-career or they've kind of gotten to impressive places, and you're like, “What is the path? How did they figure that out? That they know what they’re doing?” I clearly didn’t know what I was doing. But when did you think you were going to do? When did you kind of find your direction? Did you know you were going to go into industry, going to marketing? Did you think you were going to do something else? And when did you figure that out?

Yeah, so when I was in school, as I said, I was in theater. My first dream was to actually take acting professionally. I was in theater through school, through college. But then, my parents didn't think that was a good choice. My next choice was to join the Indian Navy because my father was—he's a war hero—and I really admired him. I was like, “I want to go represent my country and be patriotic.” But he then discouraged me from doing that because at that time, women didn't get great opportunities in the Indian Navy; you were typically stuck behind a desk, as opposed to what I wanted to do was be on the front. So, that’s what I wanted to do.

And when neither of those worked out, at that time, at my age, or my batch at the time, everybody was studying to go abroad. I was like, “No, I don’t want to go abroad, I want to work for my country.” I decided to do my masters in business because I didn't want to do science, because it looked like science was too hard and people studied too much. So I kind of made the choices out of convenience, really, and ended up doing my MBA. And then after that, life just happened!

You know, I think ultimately, Sal, if I were to look back on what's consistent, is what you learn not just in school but what values get instilled in you. And I think what's helped me through and sort of guided me through all the ups and downs—and I've had plenty of downs as well—is really sort of hanging on to the values that matter. For me, it's about doing what's right, not what's good. It's about being consistent in thought, word, and action. It's those kinds of values that see you through, and I think it's so important again: teachers and parents play such an important role in not just teaching us the studies that we’d have to do, but also demonstrating and being the examples for us when it comes to values.

You know, I’m curious. I did not know this background of yours that you are essentially the theater kid turned corporate leader. You know, it's funny. A lot of folks, when I was in college, I took a theater class just on a whim, just thinking it would be a nice change of pace, and I thought it was transformational. When I really think about it, it affects how I even interact with people, how I communicate, how aware I am of my own being.

Yeah, what was the effect of theater? And obviously, we're here to talk about creativity. There's a lot of creativity in theater. How has that background given you some superpowers in it? You know, most of the folks who are corporate leaders in Silicon Valley, especially if our stereotype, say, you know, coming from South Asia, they are probably engineering majors, you know, come out here, start their life as a software engineer, and then move up through management. But you have a very, very different background. How does that either help or hurt you?

I think the way it's helped me primarily, there are a couple of things that come to mind. One is the recognition that you are not what makes that play happen. There's you; there’s a person who pulls the curtain; there’s the light; there’s the person behind the camera. There's a team that's involved, and everybody has to work in sync. The production is great for the audience only when everybody is operating together on time, on cue, and all of that takes an incredible amount of practice, an incredible amount of collaboration, and incredible clarity on what the outcome of the play needs to be. And that's what work is about.

The second thing that I learned is improvisation. Because oftentimes, the person you are working with—or your, excuse me, who you might be interacting with—might forget their dialogue; you might forget your dialogue. And being able to, in the moment, you know, sort of fill the gaps and let the story continue.

The third area, I think, is just the confidence of being in front of an audience. That's what business is about: Collaboration, innovating, creative ideas, and selling those ideas confidently through storytelling. So I do think that it's been something that's helped me, including my fighter spirit! That's where risk-taking and planning come in. I think that was an important thing that I really admired about my dad, and that's something I found I've incorporated into my work, which is really being thoughtful about what the strategy for winning needs to be—what the operational efficiency and operational cadence need to be—all of those skills that you need in business.

Yeah, you know, I've never made the connection before, but hearing you describe it, you're so right! I never—I feel like theater should be part of any business program now because you're absolutely right: it’s a clear goal, a lot of coordination. But as soon as you're out there, some new stuff might happen; you're going to have to improvise!

And you know, it reminds me, I actually was, for half a year in college, in an improv comedy troupe. And we used to have to go on stage with no planning. People would throw out words and scenarios, and I have never gone through a more stressful thing in my life than being on an improv comedy team! But, it also just—you know, once you go through that, you're like, “Well, nothing else in life is going to surprise me!”

But I never—I’d never fully drawn the parallels. I'm going to make sure my kids get a little bit more organized drama, I think. I'm already providing some unorganized drama for them! But organized in their lives.

Well, let’s switch gears a little bit. Let’s talk about this partnership. And obviously, I am very excited about it, but I’d love to hear from your point of view what excites you. Well, you know, I'd love to hear your own words: What's the motivation for partnering with Khan Academy? What do you hope we’re able to do together?

Yeah, so this is an amazing opportunity, and Sal, we are so proud and honored to be the creativity partner for Khan Academy! As I said earlier, for Adobe, enabling creativity for everyone is our mission. We believe every human is innately creative, and giving them a voice is a part of our mission. And the fact that, you know, your platform serves many millions—I believe it’s over 100 million students globally—and the focus of your work has been in the STEM area.

What I'm excited about, what Adobe is excited about, is giving all of these kids, through the classroom, access to tools where they can express themselves creatively. Because what we've seen happen, Sal—and there's many, many examples, including a personal example I had when I was volunteering in Teach For India—where kids who'd never seen technology, had never interacted with Adobe tools, when they were given access to it, it changed their learning experience and what it did for them in confidence is what we are excited about.

And it's not just sort of the storytelling aspect of it. We know that future hiring managers, they value creativity in employees. We know—the World Economic Forum, Bloomberg, LinkedIn—their research has said that creativity is a skill that most hiring managers are looking for. So, the ramifications of bringing creativity to your platform and the lives it can impact is incredibly thrilling and so important, especially in today's time where kids, you know, their entire education experience has been upended because of COVID.

No, I couldn’t agree with you more! You know, from my point of view, Khan Academy's mission as a not-for-profit is free world-class education for anyone, anywhere. And education has a lot of dimensions to it. There’s the cognitive element of it, there’s a socialization element of it, there’s the credentialing side of it. But even if you talk about the cognitive side of it, a lot of folks listening know Bloom's cognitive taxonomy. It's usually drawn as a pyramid where the base is remembering; it’s the most rote type of work to do. Then you go into skills, procedures, and as you get to higher up the pyramid, you're getting into synthesis, application; at the very top, it’s create.

I’m a big believer that you need the whole pyramid! That, you know, if you just do one part without the other, you're selling yourself short. But the reason why I believe Bloom set it up as a pyramid is that they do, to many degrees, build on each other—not always, but many times build. And Khan Academy has historically focused on, I would say, that core foundational piece of the pyramid—more of the skill fluency, etc. But there’s always a desire, well, for real education, we got to make sure kids get to the top of the pyramid as well.

So for us to be able to be so complementary, where the students and teachers who are already leveraging Khan Academy, and hopefully many more, to make sure they have fluency in their mathematics and their sciences, um, have that content knowledge, also have world-class tools to apply that in really thoughtful ways. That they complement each other.

So, you know, this is this announcement we’re making this week is very exciting. Actually, I’ll cue this video that I think we've put together that describes the program, and we—I think we can comment on it as it’s playing as well.

[Video: Teach Creativity with Adobe and Khan Academy
A powerful new partnership bringing together creative tools and content knowledge to empower thousands of teachers and millions of students worldwide. It’s a beautiful blend of informative and engaging content. Get started today by registering for our brand new self-paced course, available for free on the Adobe Education Exchange. Take this course and earn up to 20 hours of professional development credit and maybe even a visit from Sal Khan himself, founder of Khan Academy! Register by May 17 and share a tweet tagging an educator who inspires you with the hashtag AdobeCon Creativity for the chance to win an Adobe Creativity Kit. Want to surprise your students with the voice Khan Academy is best known for? Yes, we are talking about a virtual visit to your classroom from Sal Khan! Should you do that? Now you have, or plan to include creativity. Submit your entry by May 17th, and you could win one of five virtual classroom visits from Sal Khan! Embrace creativity in powerful new ways with Adobe and Khan Academy. Sign up to the course and learn how to get started now.

[End of Video]

I hope it's an incentive for people—that their classrooms could be disrupted by me! So much fun!

The course that we've designed is specifically tailored for Khan teachers. We built this along with your team, Sal, and the courses are specifically designed to be used like creativity in math, creativity in social studies, creativity in science.

And, you know, I know recently there was a young woman called Hillary Andalus who was part of your—I think it's called the Junior Breakthrough Challenge?

Yeah, thank you!

—And she’s somebody Adobe is very familiar with. When we got to know her a few years ago when she was in her teens, and as you know, she is a STEM enthusiast. She had a classmate who was very creative, and she decided, as a young teen, that “Why can't I be creative?” She started teaching herself Photoshop and Illustrator just for fun.

Unfortunately, while she was a little kid, she lived in the Philippines; there was this really big typhoon that hit the Philippines in her town. It’s called Typhoon Yolanda. Many people lost their lives, and there was a lot of damage. What she realized was that the communication that was put together to help people understand what the impact of the typhoon would be was just not impactful enough. That’s when she made a commitment to herself and has done some amazing work to really take science concepts and make them more accessible and understandable through creative communication.

And she's done this amazing work, created this amazing video, and then of course, she got awarded the prize.

To the exact challenge number—is this…

Oh, she goes, yeah, she says it’s six; she says it’s nine.

So yeah, I know Hillary's quite impressive! Amazing woman! And now she’s at MIT thanks to the scholarship she got.

I think we can stop the video.

Yeah, she is so inspiring! But this is a great example, and I hope that the teachers on your platform can take advantage of these lesson plans. There are hundreds of lesson plans; there are projects, there are tests that they can bring into the classroom to inspire these kids to communicate and tell these stories in an impactful way, making these concepts that can sometimes seem obtuse more accessible and have an impact.

No, Hillary’s great! I mean, all the Breakthrough Junior Challenge winners are a very impressive set of—you know, they get $250,000 for college; they get their teacher gets $50,000; and then they get I think a $50,000 or $100,000 science lab for the school. It’s done by the Breakthrough Prizes, and it’s really a brainchild of Yuri Milner and several other folks out here in Silicon Valley.

But yeah, it's incredible! I’m privileged to be part of the process as one of the judges, and obviously, we get the word out to the broader Khan Academy community. But yeah, and to your point, Hillary shows that, you know, a lot of people think somehow that STEM and creativity don’t go together—in fact, it’s the exact opposite! I always say, you know, factoring polynomials—those are giving you the toolkit so that you can unlock your creativity in STEM! That isn’t—that’s like saying that learning to mix paint is painting! No, that unlocks your capability to then become a painter. And you see someone like Hillary shows that in spades and shows the importance of this type of work.

Absolutely! I’m super excited about what your teachers can make possible for the kids!

Yeah, well, you know, Mala, all these conversations go much faster than I ever expect! Time flies when you’re having fun. But, you know, I just wanted to first of all thank you for sharing your story with us. Thank you for this partnership between Adobe and Khan Academy! I really do think it’s going to unlock hopefully many millions of Hillary Andaluses around the world to benefit all of us and be just more creative in the world, which I think just makes the world more interesting.

Any final thoughts for all of the parents and students and teachers listening?

I would just say, let your kids express themselves in the way that they want to and know that the tools are just a means to get their ideas out. Creativity is equally important as the science and the math that they're learning because that ultimately is how they will be able to have an impact—by bringing their ideas out into the world, sharing them with others, and having an impact.

So, thank you!

Love that! Thank you so much, Mala, and I couldn't agree with you more! If you don't have that creativity side, then really all of the skill level is, to some degree, all for naught! Like it all—it everything—it needs to be in service to creativity, and we're so excited about this partnership!

Thank you so much!

Thank you! It's a pleasure, and thanks for having me!

No, no, it’s been a pleasure! Thanks everyone for joining today! We're very excited about this partnership with Khan Academy and Adobe around creativity. Parents, students, teachers, you can all check out the site that we're doing on the Creativity Cloud. I'm sure if you do a Google search for Khan Academy, Adobe, and the Creative Cloud, I'm sure you will find all of these resources. And we look forward to continuing to go on this journey of learning with you.

Thanks, everyone!