Caroline Wimberly

I think I'm most proud of the fact that I've been able to carry working creatively through my entire career and finding interesting new pathways to not only do that for myself, but also to empower other people to explore their creativity as well. Creativity and art and design has always been such a lifeline for me, so it's really special to be able to work on a team that really champions that for everybody. Even though my education at Parsons was pretty rigorous and very challenging - Parsons is famously a very difficult institution - I think my education has really afforded me the opportunity to approach the work that I do currently in the tech sphere with a really special perspective. I'm able to work with the creatives and the artists who we partner with on our team, and I have first-hand experience of what it's like to be them, what it's like to work as a creative, what it's like to go to school as a creative, which really gives me an edge when it comes to developing my strategy work and having a great perspective on what their lived experience is like.

My advice would be to just stay really curious and open-minded, and to just explore every pathway that comes your direction. I think it's just so vital to not close yourself off to certain experiences or things, just because it might not be what you ultimately picture for yourself. I think the best things in my career have come as a result of something else not going my way. I think it's really important to have that open mind, and to kind of look at different opportunities as a moment in time to think, like, what could this hold? Like, this could be anything. I think every opportunity should be full of potential, if that's the energy that you bring to it, versus having feeling limited or anything. I also think getting creative with how you find opportunities, and how you knock down doors for yourself, and taking untraditional routes to get to traditional places is important. My journey to even get into working on such an amazing team at Adobe was kind of, you know, it took me a while to get there, because I didn't know this is where I wanted to end up, so I kind of had a longer journey than maybe some other people did. I would just say keep an open mind, and just don't stress yourself out too much. I think women put so much pressure on themselves to be perfect, but I think it's the imperfect moments that can really lead somewhere special. You have this vision for your life, and you're like, I have to do this, and I have to do that, I have to follow A, B, C, D, E, F, G to get there, but then sometimes the diverted path is what it takes to somewhere cooler, and you're like, gosh, I'm so glad I did that, because if I had not done that, then I wouldn't have gotten over here.

Creativity and design are central to everything I do - they leave and breathe through my hobbies, interests, and work. I love to still sew and create my own clothes. I am very passionate about interior design and art. I love going to galleries, I love going to museums, I love to tap into what's happening in culture. I'm just very big into creating things in my own life and kind of creating my own aesthetic world. I work professionally in social media as a strategist from the corporate side, but I also love to dabble in social media and content creation myself - that's a really fun outlet to explore all the different ways I can tell stories and find new avenues to express myself through creativity. I feel like that's a pretty common through-line in my life. I think there are moments in your career where being behind the scenes is what you need to do in order to propel yourself forward, and other times you need to be front and center and sparkly and in front of people and doing all that you can be to be visible and seen. But other times, I think it's just as important to be behind the scenes and to put in the work when maybe nobody else is seeing it, because I think those two things just support each other. A lot of people, when you present artwork or the result of your creativity, it's your moment to shine, it's your moment to present everything, it's your moment to be seen, but most people don't see the work that goes into creating something, and how messy the process can be in creating something very beautiful.