Adobe's already built the rest of the funnel — the Student Ambassador Program (Advocate → Icon → All Star), Future Campus Creators, Adobe Express Ambassadors, the 39K-member Creative Career Discord, MAX, and now Acrobat Student Spaces. Layer 1 is the always-on top-of-funnel that lights all of it up. It needs a calendar that never lies, an intake that never blocks, and a publisher who shows up daily.
✦ This photo isn't real
Generated in Adobe Firefly. With me on the team, it could become a real moment.
▶ Cuts I edited · 1/4
Each cut produced in Adobe Premiere Pro, Photoshop, and After Effects.
The ecosystem Layer 1 powers
Adobe has spent years assembling a serious student ecosystem — Ambassadors, Future Campus Creators, the Express program, the 39K-member Creative Career Discord, Acrobat Student Spaces, and MAX. Each one has its own moment, its own audience, its own opportunity to surface. Here's how I'd treat them as the publisher of Layer 1.
Advocate → Icon → All Star tiers, plus campus Lead Ambassadors who own the calendar.
Layer 1 lane
Layer 1 is where ambassadors first hear about new tasks, point opportunities, and MAX moments. I've run the exact analog: a 15-campus ScholarshipOwl ambassador corps fed by daily Discord broadcasts.
Design + film students with dedicated budget, early Creative Cloud access, and campus events.
Layer 1 lane
These are exactly the high-signal students Layer 1 should serve first — early access drops, beta invites, MAX call-ups. I'd build a tagged broadcast lane for them on day one.
Exclusive community space, recognition, and growth-focused perks.
Layer 1 lane
Express challenges are the perfect Layer 1 native unit: short brief in Discord, TL;DR in GroupMe, deadline ping in WhatsApp, winners spotlighted back across all three.
AI study spaces — flashcards, quizzes, podcasts, video overviews generated from class PDFs.
Layer 1 lane
Brand-new product. Maximum Layer 1 leverage: a weekly 'Study Spaces tip-of-the-week' slot across all three platforms, timed to the academic calendar, with feature-drop pings as Acrobat ships.
Workshops, mentorship, peer support, creative commissions — the public flagship.
Layer 1 lane
Layer 1 is the on-ramp; Creative Career is the destination. Cross-promote workshop calendars and graduate Layer 1 students into Career when they're ready to commit.
The peak student moment of the year — paid trips, IRL meetups, mainstage announcements.
Layer 1 lane
I'd run a 6-week MAX countdown across Layer 1 — daily speaker spotlights, sneak-peek polls, scholarship and ambassador call-ups — turning broadcast attention into MAX RSVP and tier progression.
JD ↔ Dom · 1:1 Map
Not a resume dump. A point-by-point read of how I'd show up for Layer 1 from week one.
Own the master content calendar — single source of truth for opportunities, events, product updates, challenges.
Built and ran content calendars for Mattel Creations (800K+ users), Streamlabs (1.5M+ followers), and ScholarshipOwl Discord — drops, AMAs, sweepstakes, weekly editorial. For Adobe that means weaving Express challenges, MAX countdowns, Acrobat Student Spaces tips, ambassador deadlines, and Future Campus Creators call-ups into one shared truth.
Build & manage the internal intake system — submission criteria, review cadence, publishing standards.
At Mattel I designed the intake used by Brand, Editorial, and Drops teams to submit forum posts, Discord pings, and email features. Same model fits Adobe: a single Airtable form for Creative Cloud, Acrobat, Express, Student Spaces, Events, Social, and Student Marketing — clear rubric, M/W/F triage, fixed publishing windows.
Coordinate across Creative Cloud, Acrobat, Express, Study Space, Events, Social, and Student Marketing.
Cross-functional is my default mode — at Cisco I coordinated the goCSAP ambassador program across Talent Brand, Comms, and Recruiting; at AMD across Esports, Gaming, and Product. I'd run a weekly Layer 1 stand-up the same way: 30 minutes, every team gets a slot.
Manage day-to-day publishing across Discord, GroupMe, and WhatsApp — formatted per platform, on schedule.
Discord-native (Mattel + ScholarshipOwl). Group-chat-native via the Campus Commandos chapter program (100 campuses). I rewrite the same brief three times — long for Discord, terse for GroupMe, deadline-shaped for WhatsApp — without losing the call to action.
Monitor community health: subscriber growth, opt-in rates, content engagement, click-through.
Weekly dashboards are non-negotiable. Grew ScholarshipOwl Discord 0 → 17K with an opt-in-first onboarding I'd carry over verbatim. Reported on Mattel forum sentiment monthly. Layer 1's notification budget is a precious resource — I treat mute-rate as seriously as growth.
Maintain community guidelines & moderation standards.
Hired, trained, and managed a 20+ moderator team at Mattel Creations across forums and Discord. Wrote the playbook. Layer 1 is broadcast-first, so the mod surface is smaller — but the brand-safety bar is higher.
Flag emerging trends & feedback to inform Layer 2 strategy.
I treat Layer 1 as Adobe's always-on listening surface. A weekly Trends + Student Voice memo — what's resonating in Discord threads, which Express challenge prompts are spiking, what students keep asking Acrobat to do — feeds Layer 2 with signal, not noise.
Familiarity with company products is a plus but not required.
Adobe Creative Suite has been in my hands since high school. Photoshop, Premiere, After Effects, Illustrator, InDesign, Lightroom, Acrobat, Express, Audition — nearly 20 years of muscle memory. I won't be 'learning the ecosystem' in week one. I'll be using it.
Why this client, specifically
A Layer 1 PM at a creative-tools company has to get it. Has to know why a student opens After Effects for the first time, why Acrobat is still the quiet workhorse, why Express is winning the quick-share moment.
I do — because I started in Adobe Creative Suite as a teenager, and I've never stopped.
Discovered Premiere, After Effects, and Photoshop in high-school video production. Cut short films, animated lower-thirds, edited yearbook portraits, designed band posters. The Adobe ecosystem was the first creative toolchain I ever loved.
Lived inside Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign for student publications, freelance design, and music project artwork (Nocturne Quartet, Space City Sound). Picked up Lightroom for portrait sessions and Audition for podcast cuts.
Marketing roles at ScholarshipOwl, Cisco, MD Anderson Cancer Center — every social asset, every event one-pager, every executive deck ran through Creative Cloud. Designed the 2019 Cancer Network Member Meeting mobile app collateral end-to-end.
My day still often starts in Photoshop or Premiere. Acrobat for case studies. Express for fast social cuts. The same tools the Layer 1 audience is being onboarded into — I've been a power user for two decades.
The operating system I'd ship in week one
The Layer 1 PM is, fundamentally, a publisher. These are the two artifacts every team should be able to point to within five minutes of asking.
layer-1-content-calendar.xlsx · Week 14
| Day | Time | Platform | Topic | Owner | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MON | 9:00a → 5:00p | Discord → GroupMe | Express Challenge brief · #scrollstoppers + Acrobat Student Spaces tip | Student Mktg / Acrobat | Live |
| TUE | 12:00p | Ambassador task drop · 50 pts toward swag | Ambassador Ops | Scheduled | |
| WED | 10:00a → 3:00p | Discord → All | Creative Cloud feature drop demo + MAX Day 28 speaker reveal | CC Team / Events | In Review |
| THU | 11:00a | Discord | Future Campus Creators · beta invite | Higher Ed | Scheduled |
| FRI | 11:00a | Discord | Student Spotlight · Express → IG Reel | Social | Scheduled |
layer-1-intake-form
InternalSubmitting team
Asset / opportunity
Audience
Best platform fit
Live by
Reviewed Mon · Wed · Fri.
Three platforms · Three voices · One calendar
Layer 1 is broadcast-first, but every channel has its own etiquette. Here's how I'd approach each one out of the gate — and what I'd measure.
Receipts
Each of these is a broadcast-first, opt-in community where the operator was accountable to a calendar, an intake, and a metric.
Built the official Discord from a blank server. Designed a 3-month internship that scaled into a year-round Ambassador program across 15 college campuses. Co-hosted webinars driving thousands of free-trial sign-ups.
Ran the editorial + community calendar across forums, Discord, and email for one of the largest brand communities in toys & collectibles. Built and managed a 20+ moderator team. Hot Wheels × MSCHF: 2.7M impressions, 5-minute sell-out.
Translated a 100K-download target into local missions across 100 top universities. Chapter leads ran group-chat broadcasts on the messaging apps students actually use — exactly the Layer 1 pattern.
Designed and ran the goCSAP social ambassador program from scratch — driving millions in traffic to Cisco's career site and turning employees into a coordinated, opt-in publishing layer.
Why I'm the unfair pick
ScholarshipOwl. From a blank server to 17,000+ students with a measured, opt-in-first onboarding — the same pattern Adobe needs to keep Layer 1 notification rates high.
Ran the ScholarshipOwl Ambassador program across 15 campuses, then designed Campus Commandos to scale chapter-led broadcasts to 100. Adobe's Student Ambassador tiers (Advocate → Icon → All Star) and Future Campus Creators map directly onto patterns I've already optimized.
Photoshop and Premiere since high school. Express for fast social cuts, Acrobat for case studies, Lightroom for portrait sessions, Audition for podcast posts. I won't be googling shortcuts — I'll be cutting the asset before the meeting ends.
1.1M+ replies across Mattel Creations forums + Discord. I learned the hard way that a community's most valuable resource is its willingness to keep pings on. Layer 1 lives or dies on opt-in rate, and I treat it that way.
At Mattel I delivered monthly sentiment + trend recaps that fed product, editorial, and drops. Layer 1 is Adobe's largest always-on listening surface — the PM should be feeding Layer 2 with signal every week, not just publishing into a void.
Cisco goCSAP across Talent Brand + Comms + Recruiting. AMD across Esports + Gaming + Product. Mattel across Brand + Editorial + Drops. Coordinating Creative Cloud, Acrobat, Express, Student Spaces, Events, Social, and Student Marketing isn't a stretch — it's the day job I've been doing for ten years.
What people say
Dom's ability to work within several projects simultaneously and keep everything organized and on point is unparalleled.
Dom approaches his work creatively, thoughtfully and with clear execution. He knows when to push the lines of brand voice and when to pull back — a rare attribute in a community manager.
Dom did a fantastic job of understanding the pulse of our audience and built a great organic strategy in no time.
Dom's ideas for a brand collaboration between Mattel and MSCHF were intrinsic to the campaign we launched — Mattel won multiple awards for it.
First 90 days
Phase 01
Days 1–30
Phase 02
Days 31–60
Phase 03
Days 61–90
Ready when you are
Remote-friendly, U.S.-based, and ready to ship for Adobe. I can be in a working session by next week — calendar built, intake drafted, first posts queued.