Simon Morris

Simon Morris thought he was heading for the Foreign Office.

He studied International Relations at LSE and represented the UK at World Model United Nations. Then, after graduating, his uncle offered him two months helping a small Israeli technology company called ClickSoftware establish itself in Britain.

The UK office was the top floor of his grandparents’ house.

Morris answered phones, collected post, made cold calls, booked events and wrote press releases. He was doing sales, business development and marketing before he had really decided which of those was his job.

Two months became 14 years.

ClickSoftware went public on Nasdaq in 2000, with Morris part of the team that helped build the business internationally. His role expanded from EMEA to Asia-Pacific and eventually global marketing, taking him onto the executive team and giving him his first experience of building a brand across very different markets.

Then Adobe called.

Morris joined in September 2011, just as the company was embarking on one of the biggest shifts in its history. Packaged software bought periodically was becoming a subscription business built around Creative Cloud. That changed far more than the payment model: Adobe suddenly had a direct, ongoing relationship with its customers, new kinds of data and a reason to keep proving its value long after the initial purchase.

Morris has spent the 15 years since helping Adobe navigate that transformation. Today he leads international marketing across EMEA, APAC and Latin America – more than 90 countries and 50 languages – spanning audiences from professional creatives and global businesses to students and small companies.

Increasingly, that has also meant taking Adobe beyond the places people expect to find a software company. Morris spearheaded its partnership with the Women’s FA Cup, putting Adobe Express into the hands of clubs, players and fans to help them tell their own stories. The work saw him named to the RAISE Power 100 in Women’s Sport.

He started out expecting a career in diplomacy.

Instead, he built one translating technology across borders, audiences and cultures.