Hello • こんにちは • Hola • 你好 • Bonjour • سلام • Hallo • नमस्ते • Olá • 안녕하세요 • Jambo • שלום • Ciao • สวัสดี •

Hello • こんにちは • Hola • 你好 • Bonjour • سلام • Hallo • नमस्ते • Olá • 안녕하세요 • Jambo • שלום • Ciao • สวัสดี •

ABOUT EMILY

Strategic designer and design leader with over 20 years experience, leading high performing teams to create innovative, on-brand, cross-surface, user-centered experiences that exceed both customer and business goals. Passionate about driving design excellence, leveraging AI workflows and applications, design-led product development, and executive collaboration and engagement.

MY STORY

For the past 12 years, I’ve had the privilege of working at Adobe, after they acquired my husband and my design consultancy in 2013 to launch Creative Cloud, a web-based ecosystem for creatives worldwide with new services, collaboration and community, as well as a subscription model to Adobe’s flagship software - Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Premiere Pro, and more.

At Adobe, I’ve held roles as Principal Designer, Creative Director, Head of UX, and Head of Experience Design. Each position has fueled my passion for innovation, ideation, concept design, UX/UI, design systems, interaction design, creative direction, and systems thinking. After beginning as an individual contributor, I transitioned into design leadership—managing and mentoring teams, accelerating growth, exceeding KPIs, and collaborating across functions to achieve both customer delight and business impact on one of the most visited sites in the world. 

I also remain a hands-on designer, typically on high-visibility initiatives that require blue sky thinking, and I’m well-versed in driving projects from vision through execution. I’m energized by pitching new ideas and presenting to executive leadership. 

I’ve been fortunate to create impact across Adobe’s Creative Cloud business unit, global marketing organization, and centralized Adobe Design group. Today, I lead a multi-disciplinary, full-stack design team spanning consumer creative apps and services, education, documents and productivity (Acrobat), and enterprise. I thrive in cross-functional collaboration with product management, marketing, engineering, research, analytics, and operations.

Before Adobe, I spent a decade as co-founder of Ideacodes, a San Francisco–based consultancy, where we crafted high-impact design strategies and user experiences for tech startups, Fortune 500s, universities, arts organizations, and nonprofits - including MTV, IDEO, GDGT, GigaOM, 23andM3, Ning, Stanford, MIT, University of Berkeley, the Sierra Club and many others. These were the early days of Web 2.0, web services, and mobile apps, and our work helped fuel rapid MAU growth, drove customer engagement, and contributed to multiple acquisitions.  We provided a full suite of digital design services, from concept design and development, UX/UI, branding, creative direction, design strategy to digital marketing.

Earlier in my career, I worked in higher education tech as a web director at Cornell University and as an information architect and interface designer at the University at Buffalo, where I earned my Master of Fine Arts degree in sculpture and mixed media installation.  My background in fine art, liberal arts and literature (BA, College of William and Mary) have influenced my digital work in countless ways.

Throughout it all, my love for the intersection of design, technology, knowledge, and people has remained constant. Drawing connections, creating meaningful and beautiful experiences, and driving impact through true collaboration are what inspire me to turn on my laptop each morning.

Experience design
Data-driven design
UX/UI design
Interaction design Prototyping

Areas of Expertise

Design leadership
Design management
Design strategy
Design thinking Design systems

Creative direction
AI workflows
Customer acquisition
Digital marketing Executive engagement

Brands I’ve Worked With

  • Emily is one of my most trusted and valued creative leaders. Over the past decade, I’ve had the privilege of working alongside her and witnessing her in action. Emily consistently shows up with purpose—guiding even the most senior executives through smart, thoughtful, and well-informed design decisions. She has been the driving force behind Adobe’s UX evolution, transforming insights and bold ideas into impactful, high-performing customer experiences. Her leadership has unlocked new opportunities and optimizations, directly contributing to multiple seven-figure ARR wins. Emily built and cultivated a small but mighty team, nurturing talent and delivering some of the most innovative and thoughtful design solutions, systems, and patterns across Adobe. A sharp thinker, inspiring presenter, and true visionary, some of my fondest memories with Emily are exploring “what could be” scenarios—prototyping the future of experiences at Adobe. From Adobe.com to the world’s largest creative event platforms, Emily has been a steady, influential force for me, our team, and the entire company. We are truly fortunate to have her leading the way.

    AJ Joseph, VP and Chief Creative Officer, Adobe

  • I appreciate Emily on so many levels. I believe her superpower is seeing how everything connects; both from a visual and UX perspective as well as from a strategic one. I have worked very closely with her for years and she is a fantastic partner in crime; in large part because of her calm and collected demeanor and fantastic ability to focus on and drive the most important and impactful parts of any project. She has incredibly strong, clear presentation skills, which has been invaluable in her role over the years in terms of gaining alignment with senior and executive stakeholders and partners. In terms of how she interacts with her design team, she’s an overall great leader, both skilled at the emotional IQ part of managing a diverse team as well as very strong at giving creative direction and design feedback and the work is always the better for it. All in all, Emily is an incredible asset!

    Mike Schmiedt, Sr Manager, Design Operations

  • First and foremost, Emily has consistently demonstrated exceptional creativity and strategic thinking in the projects she’s involved in. Emily has an innate ability to bring fresh perspectives and innovative solutions to the table, which has been incredibly valuable to our greater team. I see Emily’s work of developing her designers into great partners for engineering to deliver critical value for Adobe. This quality of hers goes to show that she’s an effective design leader at Adobe developing future design leaders. Moreover, Emily's ability to balance multiple projects and deliver outstanding results is commendable. She has a unique way of approaching challenges and turning them into opportunities for growth and innovation. Her proactive approach and dedication to continuous improvement have had a significant impact on our team's success.

    Audumber Ramesh, Director, Web Platform Engineering

  • Reflecting on working with you over the years, particularly the most recent two, has been simultaneously enlightening and inspiring. The breadth and impact of your accomplishments, knowing full well they occurred during one of the most challenging times in Adobe's recent history, is… well… kind of jaw-dropping. And yet not surprising, considering how you deliver. You thrive in unchartered territory and are unfazed by ambiguity. Your creative leadership consistently shined through during our most challenging GenAI launches this year. You are a driven maker, with deep passion for our products, who loves nerding out on details with an uncanny sense of when to pull up and focus outward -- your sense of the right altitude to operate at in any given situation is one of your superpowers, and one of the greatest gifts you give to your team. The culture you create not only with your team but with your partners across the company fosters effective problem solving that moves swiftly to execution. Your team shows up with informed recommendations and the confidence to present their ideas. You play to win, maintaining confidence and balance by doing fewer things better. Even when the pace is crazy, your minimalist instincts consistently lead the way to strong solutions that can be efficiently executed by your team. Your peers recognize you as a stabilizing force on projects, another one of your superpowers. Your combined management efforts result in efficient work assignments, influenced by your signature calm, level-headed and collaborative nature. You are honest, direct, and sincere. You continue to be a trusted, sought-after collaborator throughout Studio leadership, from Brand Expression to Campaign journeys, Major product releases, large- scale promotions and everything in-between. Another super-power is your ability to tailor your communication to any audience: from sensitively coaching junior designers and production partners, to eagerly seeking input from creative peers and leadership, to holding your own with senior leaders and consistently putting forth POV's with integrity. You're a positive, engaged presence in meetings – with the courage to challenge and diplomacy to sell. Emily, it’s been a highlight of my career to work so closely with you.

    Kim Isola, Executive Creative Director, Adobe Studio

  • Emily is a thoughtful, strategic, and highly effective design leader. She leads a large team with empathy and precision. Her ability to collaborate across functions while navigating competing priorities with clarity and grace is one of her greatest strengths. Emily is a skilled communicator and a trusted thought partner. She is known for her calm, patient approach in the face of challenges. She uplifts her team, fosters a culture of growth and collaboration while brining both creative insight and operational excellence to every project. Emily is shaping the future of design and usability. And we need more innovative leaders like her at every company. She is shaping broader design narratives and is a wonderful partner to work with. I highly recommend her.

    Liz Hayes, Managing Creative Director

  • Emily is an incredibly accomplished designer, mentor, manager, and leader and she sets the quality bar very high for designers on her team and in partnerships with others across the org. Her leadership style is calm and thoughtful. She’s an excellent presenter and storyteller. She inspires designers to do their best work by instilling confidence in her team and colleagues. She is adept at managing through change, organizational complexity, and pressure situations, all of which are critical to the success of Adobe. I have witnessed her lead with grace and poise over many years at Adobe. Some of her many strengths include providing structure when requirements are ambiguous and delivering high quality designs that incorporate feedback from stakeholders in many different orgs and roles, maintaining the integrity of the design. Emily is a steady leader and advocates for design to be a strategic partner in every project she’s leading. She also provides clear feedback and creative direction in design reviews, both formal and informal, and she’s very approachable and easy to work with.

    Emily Uy, Staff Designer

  • Emily has been instrumental in delivering the design and UX leadership we needed to execute Project Unity—an initiative that required a high level of UX innovation and cross-functional alignment. She consistently demonstrates clear vision and strategic thinking, and she brings a strong sense of ownership to every project she touches. Emily also has an exceptional management style. She knows when to step in and guide, and when to empower her team to take the lead. Her feedback is always clear, actionable, and grounded in strong design principles. My collaborations with her direct reports have consistently yielded excellent results, which is a direct reflection of the support, coaching, and leadership she provides.

    Jessica Hayt, Sr Product Manager

  • Emily has the immense intellectual capacity necessary to simultaneously consider data points such as history, interpersonal and team dynamics, business needs, business competitors, design trends, and customer needs — and then to synthesize them into actionable feedback and recommendations. One of the things I find most impressive about Emily is that, despite all the brainpower it takes to synthesize so much information, she’s always been able to give her team simple, easy-to-understand feedback. Emily’s kindness, inclusivity, and thoughtfulness are remarkable qualities that I’ve noted on dozens of occasions. Even in circumstances where she’s the bona fide expert, she listens attentively to alternate perspectives and gives them serious consideration. This is one of the qualities that makes Emily such a fantastic leader — she’s always “calling in” team members, recognizing the good in them, noting what’s working, and helping them find the right path forward. Emily could probably do the jobs of about a hundred people! But instead, she does something more valuable: she gives context, helps them learn for themselves, and sets them up for success. The way Emily leads is a perfect example of scaling one’s impact throughout the organization.

    Ciana Wilson, Creative Director

  • I want to be Emily Chang when I grow up. To me, and to many others who have worked with her, Emily is the quintessential professional, bringing director-level attention to every aspect of her role. On the multi-year Creative Cloud Information Architecture project, I watched Emily develop sound strategy based on research from both inside and outside the company; establish milestones to help our team achieve its goals; stay on top of extremely complex requirements that shifted over time; and clearly communicate the benefits of this project to business partners and executives who weren’t necessarily keen on re-architecting Adobe.com. Emily led a team to develop and perfect the MAX event site – which took several years to complete and is now the standard for all event sites across Adobe. This demonstrates one of Emily’s many strengths: being able to take on a years-long project and keep it alive, keep it growing, keep her team inspired, and lead it to a successful conclusion. During the time we worked together in Studio, I found Emily to be flexible, adaptable, and responsive to the moment — while her quiet, engaged leadership always kept us anchored in reality, her recommendations were always backed by facts, and her big picture understanding helped us continually grow QARR across Adobe.com.

    Laura Belk, Senior Creative Director

  • Emily has been a valued partner and collaborator in a number of projects with the Brand Expression team. Throughout our time working together, I’ve appreciated how she is always willing and eager to help and advise on whatever is needed, despite her incredibly busy schedule. Emily takes initiative, works collaboratively, is decisive, inclusive, and shows great respect for those she works with and support all who work with her. She doesn’t hesitate to ask questions and poses insightful questions and perspectives based on her extensive experience in design. She approaches challenges logically, strategically, and thoughtfully, always with an eye on the big picture and the impact to her team, organization, and business. In working with members of her team, it’s also clear that they value her leadership and appreciate her trust in them. I often count on her vision and judgement, not just on design matters, but also on how to navigate conversations. She knows who to pull in and when to ensure things would go efficiently while being inclusive and maintaining transparency. Her knowledge of people dynamics and her unique position to bridge design, engineering and business has helped drive the progress of many projects I’ve personally worked on with her. Where Emily’s abilities really shine is when things get chaotic and hairy. Emily is reliably cool-calm-and-collected no matter the circumstances. In pressure-filled situations, her calm (and thus calming) demeanor can help transform the tone of any discussion to one that is meaningful and productive. She’s the epitome of an active listener, clearly taking in the viewpoints from all and finding ways of distilling things down to what’s important while coming up with creative solutions to the problem at hand. Web is extensive and has many touchpoints and as someone who has worked on web for decades, I know it is also a surface that many have opinions on and it is often difficult to decipher and deliver on all stakeholder needs and wants. She balances all these (sometimes conflicting considerations) with grace.

    Alyce Moy, Senior Marketing Program Manager, Brand Expression

  • You’ve been an incredible partner throughout—collaborative, clear, and always bringing valuable insights to the table. You strike a great balance between being thoughtful in your approach and moving things forward efficiently. I also appreciate how open and communicative you are, which makes it easy to problem-solve and align quickly, even when things are moving fast.

    Shweta Malik, Group Mgr, Engineering Program Management

  • Emily has a calming and thoughtful presence, especially when differing opinions arise. I appreciate her partnership to get people aligned on design direction, even if they did not agree at the outset. This approach helps her team in role modeling how to approach different perspectives when collaborating with partner and stakeholder teams. Even if there's disagreement, Emily makes people feel heard and that helps to build trust.

    Adam Seghi, Sr. Manager, Product Management

  • You are always responsive and I love your curiosity and your eagerness to problem solve. The work you did to help codify the process workflows in our recent re-org was structured well, and helped ground the team and clarify both the old and new ways of working, which was super helpful in getting many folks aligned to a new way of working. This work will also be foundational as we adopt other process enhancements. We will certainly leverage your work going forward. Nice to have it all documented so clearly and efficiently.

    Lisa Burrows, Sr. Director, Operations

  • You are quick and efficient and have a great way of dealing with feedback and getting everyone to agree on one POV. We tend to spiral down different paths and you are always able to get the team to get on the same page which I admire. You have a knack for identifying solutions to the problems that we come to you with. I trust your design vision, and you are always able to come up with solutions that we couldn’t even initially wrap our heads around. You’ve taken on MASSIVE projects with calm and thoughtfulness. Wrangling those projects is no easy feat! You are a pleasure to work with, you are helpful, insightful, and I find it easy to trust your vision in projects we’ve worked on in the past. I think that you have an ability to redirect conversations and help us to see your POV in a way that makes you a wonderful leader.

    Carly Engel, Sr Product Manager

  • Emily and her team are exceptional at thinking out of the box and pushing the design envelope for the app recommender project. From the first time I engaged with them almost four years ago, the team is always future thinking and not afraid to fill the backlog with future state designs that the team can work towards. The app recommender a unique surface as it functions as an end- to-end product that lives on the site. Because of this distinctiveness, the design team has had to work extremely close with our engineering team building this experience. They have seamlessly integrated the engineering requirements into their workflows and have been instrumental in bringing this feature to life. When working with Emily’s team it’s clear they have clear autonomy over their work, which is great to see the trust she instills in them.

    Emily Kellman-Kessel, Sr Product Manager

  • I really enjoy working with you. You are great at explaining complicated topics and breaking it apart to actionable moments. I really appreciate that.

    Jess Lambert, Sr. Program Manager, Design Ops