Education Growth Lead - MENAP

Canva

About the Role

As the Education Growth Lead for MENAP, you ll own the strategy and execution for how Canva activates and grows within schools and universities across the region. This isn t a sales role. Your focus is what happens after: ensuring that the institutions Canva enters genuinely embed it, use it, and expand their adoption on it over time.

You ll build the relationships with education ministries, school networks, and university bodies that create institutional-level traction. You ll design and deliver programs, like University Champions and Canva for Campus, that turn early access into active, sticky usage. And you ll work cross-functionally with EDU product management, product marketing, engineering, and analytics to make sure the platform and GTM motion are actually working for education users in this region.

While the initial focus is GCC, you re building the playbook for all of MENAP. The patterns you establish here will influence how Canva approaches education growth across the broader region for years to come.

What you ll do

• Develop and own the MENAP Education Growth strategy across school leadership and university sectors, starting with GCC and expanding across the broader MENAP region.

• Build and sustain partnerships with education ministries, school networks, regional education authorities, university bodies, and student organisations including crafting formal MoUs and government partnership agreements.

• Design and deliver GTM strategies for flagship education programs including University Champions and Canva for Campus, from concept through to in-market execution.

• Coordinate cross-functional work with EDU product managers, product marketing, engineering, and analytics teams to ensure the product and GTM motion reflect the needs of MENAP education users.

• Collaborate with MENAP Sales and Community teams to share insights from schools and universities, align on event presence and messaging, and drive adoption at scale through complementary outreach.

• Represent Canva at regional education events, conferences, and partner briefings, building Canva s profile as a leading education technology partner in MENAP.

• Identify and develop strategic partnerships with government education initiatives and digital transformation programmes, including crafting the partnership frameworks and MoUs that underpin them.

What we're looking for

As a regional lead role, you re someone who can own a complex, cross-functional challenge and drive it forward with both strategic clarity and hands-on execution. You re comfortable navigating ambiguity education ecosystems in MENAP are diverse, often deeply relationship-driven, and require patience alongside pace.

You likely bring experience in EdTech, policy, higher education, or public sector strategy, and you know how to work within institutional contexts without losing momentum. You re a strong relationship builder who can hold meaningful conversations with senior education leaders, ministry officials, and student communities alike. You bring sharp program management skills, you can design a GTM motion and actually ship it, and you re genuinely curious about how education works across different markets and cultures in this region.

Critically, you understand what this role is and isn t. You re not here to close deals as that lies with our Education Sales. You re here to make those deals matter: to activate, build stickiness, and create genuine long-term impact in the institutions Canva enters.

What you ll Learn and Build

• Deep expertise in education market development across MENAP one of the most dynamic and culturally diverse regional education landscapes in the world.

• First-hand experience building institutional partnerships and government relations at a high-growth global technology company.

• Cross-functional leadership skills, working across product, marketing, sales, and community to drive outcomes you influence but don t directly own.

• The opportunity to build Canva s MENAP education activation playbook from the ground up a function with genuine regional and global visibility.