By SGN | 24 Sep 2026
For many, a career is a straight line, a steady climb up a single corporate ladder. But for Lily Wu, life has been a series of deliberate, curiosity-driven side quests.
She’s orchestrated an international shoe arbitrage at age 16, published a children’s book, navigated high-stakes business challenges in China, and taken a detour to Mexico City to learn Spanish.
Now in Singapore serving as Canva’s first strategic hire in the city-state, Lily is leveraging her entrepreneurial playbook to scale the global design giant’s presence across the region.
Cultivating an enterprising mindset from a young age
Born to artist parents who moved to Australia in the 1980s, she grew up in a highly creative, but financially volatile environment.
“I saw how difficult it is to survive as an artist,” she shares, recalling how her parents had to work nearly every day of the year to keep their gallery afloat. When the global financial crisis hit, her parents had to sell their gallery and return to China for a few months to regroup and seek new opportunities.
Unlike her peers, who were looking for their first part-time jobs, Lily was busy building an international sneaker business. She had remained behind in Australia, and was unable to find work even at retailers like McDonald’s.
Instead of letting the rejections stall her, she spotted an arbitrage opportunity that involved selling out-of-season American sneakers to Australian shoppers for a profit.
The venture grew into a six-figure business, before she chose to close it after high school, simply because her curiosity had shifted elsewhere. It also taught her one of the biggest lessons she’d carry throughout her career: good partnerships create value for everyone.
This early fearlessness was heavily reinforced by her relationship with art and movement.
Later, in her senior year of high school, Lily noticed a younger peer making $50 an hour teaching hip-hop. Driven by a desire to try it herself, she and a friend began teaching K-Pop classes at a local youth center.
Never one to miss an opportunity, she pitched the same youth center to host her own solo art exhibition, featuring her intricate line-art pen drawings; a process that taught her to embrace the messy middle stages of creation without ripping up the paper.
“Instead of fearing failure or erasing my mistakes, I learned how to turn my mistakes into something beautiful,” she reflects.
After high school, Lily continued chasing opportunities wherever she found them.
While studying accounting at university, she founded Austern International, an education-tech venture helping Australian students access overseas internship opportunities in China.
Despite this initiative’s commercial success, Lily chose to exit the company when she felt her personal learning curve flattening. “I’m not motivated by money, nor am I personally drawn to business or entrepreneurship,” she admits.
“What I value most is curiosity. I’d rather pursue opportunities that help me learn and grow.”
Dismantling old identities, and embracing new challenges
Lily secured a coveted role at Apple, only to have the opportunity unexpectedly rescinded due to pandemic-era disruptions.
“I was crushed, because I wanted the external validation of this massive company to choose me,” she admits. “But I realised that my friends still liked me. People don’t care about your job title; they value you for your energy, your enthusiasm, and your zest for life.”
Her mentor, the former legal head of entrepreneurship at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), commissioned three of her art pieces, before introducing her to a brand-new community partnerships role at Stripe.
Never content with staying in a comfort zone, she and her husband embarked on another intentional “side quest”: moving to Mexico City to immerse themselves in the Spanish language. Such adventures were not unusual for the couple, who had met in a hostel in Singapore, and had travelled to fifteen countries together before COVID-19.
While there, she took a role leading North American market expansion for Meet Social, China’s largest cross-border digital marketing agency, managing massive enterprise accounts like BYD, TikTok, SHEIN, and Temu.
Becoming Canva's first hire in Singapore
While at Stripe, Lily had formed a close working relationship with Mark, the then-Head of Enterprise. When he moved on to Canva as its new Head of APAC Sales, he decided he wanted to work with Lily.
“I didn’t have much clarity on what the role entailed until I was hired,” she reveals. “But I knew Mark wanted an entrepreneurial builder who could navigate a blank canvas.”
An early adopter of Canva for over a decade, Lily has watched the platform undergo a massive evolution.
“Canva transformed from a design platform with AI elements, to an AI platform with design tools, and now operates as a full productivity suite that rivals legacy office software,” she explains.
This shift directly fulfills co-founder Melanie Perkins’ vision of moving from the information era into an imagination era. “It’s about reducing the skill gap until there is no gap at all,” she says. “Anything you can imagine, you can bring to life, and Canva is the ecosystem where those ideas become reality.”
The technology is only half of what makes the company special; the internal cultural practices are just as impactful.
“While I have to work really hard, I feel like I’m learning so much, especially from collaborating with colleagues,” she shares. “People here are so forthcoming with information, and are always ready to drop everything to help you.”
Empowering the next generation with TIMS
Lily channels her passion for creativity and education into This Is My Story (TIMS), an innovative programme integrating artificial intelligence into children’s storytelling. With TIMS, young people get to create prototypes and watch their imagination come to life in the form of digital books and films with the help of cutting-edge AI tools.
Founded alongside her former roommate, Jess, who initially launched the concept to help her younger brother build English language confidence, TIMS runs intensive holiday workshops for children.
Addressing the global anxieties surrounding artificial intelligence, Lily is adamant that technology should serve as a creative co-pilot, rather than an imaginative crutch.
“We want to encourage children to build critical skills in communication, storytelling, discernment, and critical thinking,” she shares.
Building long-term plans on Singapore’s East Coast
After travelling the world at length, and evaluating numerous global hubs, Lily and her husband have intentionally chosen Singapore as their permanent foundation. Now holding Permanent Resident (PR) status, Lily finds that the city-state serves as the perfect launchpad for both her career and her family planning endeavors.
“Moving to Singapore’s East Coast area has been wonderful for my social life, because I’ve gotten to be a part of so many communities,” she shares. These include her neighbourhood gym, hobby groups, and professional female networks.
Lily also views Singapore as the idea place to raise children, and to start a family.
“In Western countries, the prohibitive costs of childcare and help mean that high-performing executive women often have to completely abandon their jobs to stay home,” she shares.
“Whereas, Singapore’s structured safety nets and excellent infrastructure offer unmatched quality control for families.”
For Lily, success is no longer tied to an external corporate moniker or a specific financial baseline. “To me, success looks like having the autonomy to be intentional with how you want to build your life,” she says.
By refusing to be boxed in by rigid corporate titles or conventional definitions of linear success, Lily has stacked a diverse array of experiences; from fine art and teenage arbitrage to cross-border marketing and education; into a remarkably resilient, one-of-a-kind professional moat.
About Lily
Lily Wu is Canva’s first go-to-market hire in Singapore. She formerly built Stripe’s VC channel partnership motion across APAC, and North American market growth for MeetSocial, one of the largest cross-border digital marketing agencies in the world.
She is also the co-founder of TIMS, an innovative platform where young storytellers harness cutting-edge AI tools to create their own digital books and films
Connect with her here.
