#250 Rob Giglio: Canva’s Chief Customer Officer on Staying Relevant as a Leader and What Companies Get Wrong

Episode #250 features a rare in-depth conversation with Rob Giglio, Chief Customer Officer at Canva, the world’s leading visual AI platform serving 200M+ users globally. Previously, he held senior leadership roles at Adobe, DocuSign, and HubSpot and more.

In conversation with Vidit Agarwal, Rob shares the real story behind his career, including growing up in a military family, navigating setbacks like being laid off, and redefining success beyond titles.

He unpacks what it takes to build high-performing teams - hiring top 1–3% talent and balancing performance with genuine care for people, how he’s stayed relevant across decades of change from CPG to SaaS to AI, and how he’s now scaling Canva’s enterprise growth as a visual AI platform. He also shares why he’s intentionally chosen impact, customers, and craft over becoming a CEO.

Please enjoy exploring your curiosity.

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This episode is sponsored by:

→ Allens: Trusted advisors to leading companies including Canva. Visit allens.com.au

→ This episode is part of a special limited series on innovation, supported by the City of Sydney. Explore more at: https://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/

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Join our stable of commercial partners including the Australian Government, Google, KPMG, Vanta, Allens, Macquarie Capital, City of Sydney and more. 

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The High Flyers Podcast features in-depth interviews with the world’s most influential figures in business, tech, finance, government and sport. Launched in 2020, it has ranked in the global top ten for past three years, with listeners in 27 countries and over 200+ episodes released, and featured in Forbes, Daily Telegraph, and at SXSW.

Our guests include -- Malcolm Turnbull (Prime Minister of Australia), Anil Sabharwal (Global VP, Product at Google), Jason Collins (Head of BlackRock, Asia Pacific), Jodie Auster (Uber's Global Head of Travel), Stevie Case (Chief Revenue Officer, Vanta), Brad Banducci (CEO, Woolworths),  David Haber (GP, a16z), Rob Giglio (CCO, Canva), Jean-Michel Lemieux (CTO, Shopify + Atlassian), Sweta Mehra (EGM, NAB; ex CMO, ANZ), Bowen Pan (Creator, Facebook Marketplace), Sam Sicilia (Chief Investment Officer, Hostplus), Craig Tiley (CEO, US Tennis), John Haddock (CBO, Harvey), Niki Scevak (Co-Founder, Blackbird Ventures), Mike Schneider (CEO, Bunnings), Trent Cotchin (3x Premiership Winning Captain, Richmond FC), Peter Varghese (Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Australian Government), Jack Zhang (CEO, Airwallex), Matteo Franceschetti (CEO, Eight Sleep), Vivek Bhatia (CEO, MUFG), Sanjeev Gandhi (CEO, Orica) and more.