After losing his job in 2020, Toren Reaves opened KESA – the first Black-Owned-&-Operated Ad Agency in his hometown, Rochester, NY. Without a background or education in even the basics photography or design, Toren produced his very first e-commerce campaign using only his smartphone and LightRoom on mobile.
Because he didn’t know what he was doing, Toren didn’t know what couldn’t be done. In the following months, KESA grew to over a dozen international clients, offering everything from product design, photography, video, and paid/organic digital campaigns. To meet the growing list of client needs, Toren taught himself how to use each app in the Adobe Creative Cloud one commission at a time.
As his business and skillset grew, so to did Toren’s obligation to serve his community. Toren began teaching local at-risk youth, everything he had learned about being an entrepreneur as well as a professional creative.
Today, Toren works at Adobe as an Adobe Express Community Relationship Manager, in a very similar capacity, just on a much, much larger scale. Toren’s story is pretty wild – he went from downloading Creative Cloud for the very first time, to working for the people who make it in just under 3 years…
… and Toren is only getting started!
