Please introduce yourself. I'm Mallory Shoemaker. I'm a content strategist on the Adobe Express content design team. I work on the team that makes all of the content that goes into Express – the templates, the blog, all that good stuff – so we have a lot of fun. We’re a team of designers and strategists and kooky creators.

How did you get into this career? I started out on the internet when I was very young. YouTube started in 2005 and I started making videos at the end of 2007. You could still get on the front page of YouTube back then. One thing led to another and I was in socials forever and ever, and that's how I started at Adobe. I was the social media manager for Adobe Express for the first year and a half, and then one day, I looked up and I was like, “Oh, I think there's more to it than this.” I actually liked the planning side a little more than the pushing-everything-out side. That opportunity opened up and I hopped into strategising instead.

What does strategising actually involve? I'm very fortunate to get to work with a lot of our community. We have an amazing group of Adobe Express ambassadors. So, I work with them and work with our brand partnerships teams to create content. My role is to think about it through the lens of, if someone were looking for content because they're a fan of Nicte Cuevas – one of our amazing ambassadors – are they trying to be like Nicte? What is their end goal? How do they want to create? And so it’s a lot of thinking about: what can we make that people will find useful? What can we make that sets people up for success in their creation journey?

How are you creative in your life outside of work? I have a podcast that is related to books. I sew – that's my stress reliever. And I'm a poet; I'm a writer. It’s sometimes difficult to balance a day job and a passion outside of work, but I've been really challenging myself to work on one project at a time. I've been working on a book of my poetry.

How do you keep yourself creatively fulfilled while also working? How do you keep that balance? It's tricky. When I was on the social team, I found it more challenging because what I did outside of work was so much more closely related to what I did inside of work. So I would give most of my energy to work before it came to me. I'm more fortunate now, as it's a little bit more separate. But I like doing things that are not at all related to work to get me out of a funk. I started taking dancing classes and it's just for me. Things that are just for me help me put a separation between me and work.

What’s one piece of advice you’d give to someone who is thinking about a career in strategisation or content creation but doesn’t know where to start? You asked me earlier about my path, and my path is really interesting because I went to school for journalism – I thought I was gonna be the next Anderson Cooper. Maybe Rory Gilmore had something to do with that too. But then socials kind of happened. And my sisters and I talk about this a lot because they're younger than me and, when they're working on their resume, they don't always think about everything through the lens of being experience. When I look back at my career, it's a really tangle-y wavy line. And I kind of go, “How did I get here?” But then I look at moments and see all the experience. Making YouTube videos every day, every week, for four years was leading me here. Or going to school for journalism was leading me here and teaching me how to write or speak in public. Think about every experience as being experience. Give yourself permission to not be so serious about what experience means because life is learning and everything is experience.

See more rad stuff from Mallory on her website and Instagram, and head this-a-way for more info about Adobe MAX.