From reality tv to real-life success: Sharing lessons of resilience and authenticity with Adobe Graduate

Participating in the reality TV series Australian ‘Survivor’, Sarah Tilleke had to learn the importance of authenticity and being resilient. Joining Adobe as a Sales Graduate and now a Solutions Consultant, Sarah shares her experience on the show and what she learnt. 

Tell us a little bit about your background and role at Adobe

I studied a Bachelor of Commerce with a major in Marketing & Management at Curtin University in Perth, Australia. Most of my degree was completed online whilst I travelled with my previous job. I joined Adobe as an Inside Sales Graduate, selling our Digital Experience products. I had the opportunity to work closely with a brilliant team of Account Executive’s in the Retail & Travel space, to progress sales opportunities and support our customers.

I then made the jump from the Digital Experience team to the Digital Media team, taking up a role as a Solution Consultant for one of Adobe’s most exciting new products, Adobe Express. I now work closely with our customers to educate and inspire, around what’s possible with Express and how the product can be best leveraged in their business.

How have you engrained yourself in the Adobe culture?

I didn’t know what to expect entering the corporate space from quite a different career context, so I decided early on to get involved with any and all opportunities that came my way and to be proactive about getting to know my colleagues, the business and how it works — why it is successful — and where my place is in it all. I basically answered ‘Yes’ to every call-to-action email in my inbox.

Being the first hand up does feel daunting, much like sitting in the front row at a presentation, but my perspective has always been “well somebody’s got to do it” and I’ve always been happy to risk any self-perceived embarrassment to take the first step.

You participated in the reality TV series ‘Survivor’, how was that experience? What did you learn about yourself and what skills were you able to develop?

I am a Survivor fanatic, so getting the chance to play was a childhood dream realised, but it was not easy! For 44 days, my nights were broken up into 20-minute sleep intervals on sharp, unstable, eventually mouldy bamboo (which after a while gave me nerve damage on my hips), constant rain — one particularly memorable stint was weathering a 3-day-long cyclone — with creatures of all kinds crawling across our faces at night. The days, meanwhile, were marred with relentless hunger, injuries from gruelling challenges and constant mental gymnastics. Despite all that, the intense challenge made for an incredibly enjoyable and rewarding experience — like many opportunities to test yourself do.

What I learnt about myself from the process was something I had a pretty strong inkling about before going out there, that being my resilience. More broadly, in so many ways the experience taught me about authenticity (of all things!) — distinguishing between who talks-the-talk and who walks-the-walk. I spent a lot of my time out there strategizing with others to find pathways of mutual benefit — and at risk of comparing Enterprise Sales too closely with Survivor, the ability to compromise, be persuasive, emotionally intelligent and intentional, are skills that translate directly to the work I do day-to-day with customers, as well as to how I navigate career decisions. I’ve been asked to go back to play twice since then, though I’m simply loving my work at Adobe too much to go try catch lightning in a bottle a second time.