Elizabeth Drew Joins Team Tenato

Elizabeth Drew, Innovation Strategist, Jacqueline Drew, CEO and Principal Consultant, and Gary Drew, Operations Strategist, at the Tenato Calgary office

Written by Elizabeth Drew, Innovation Strategist who has recently joined team Tenato.

It’s Tenato’s 30th anniversary this year — which means Tenato is older than I am. Apparently, my first day at Tenato was before I could talk, as my mother brought me to her meetings as a “client screening agent.”

My childhood has always had an element of business strategy, marketing, and messaging, because my parents, Jacqueline and Gary, were no gatekeepers of their process. There are countless occasions that I can recall discussing with my parents the right messaging, or adjustments in some abstracted business, since I was able to talk. Even Barbie had an element of “sale.”

Even though this was a strong element of my upbringing, I was encouraged to explore my interests as I grew — I really enjoyed aerospace, visual arts, and music. I decided to go to university for engineering with the hopes of one day working in robotics for space applications. Luckily, that actually happened sooner than I expected. By 22, I had worked on an exploration rover for the moon and had contributions to a satellite in orbit.

I enjoyed working in that industry, but in some ways I found the concept of being a “technical person” to not be quite the right fit for me — I found a desire to be included in business conversations, and my itch for creativity and extroversion wasn’t quite being scratched.

As a product manager in a consumer electronics company in Silicon Valley, I learned a lot—the opportunity to be creative was there, to apply my business intuition, communicate continuously with so many people, and understand the needs of a customer.

I felt like all this knowledge that I had picked up from an entire upbringing with Tenato had been suddenly flourishing, and I felt like I knew so many answers for a test I never studied for. It was natural.

The “Silicon Valley mindset” and I weren’t a great fit though, so I started thinking about other options.

In university I met my fiancee, Tristan, and we worked together at that startup. We went back to Canada and decided to start a business — Omnitone — something we had talked about for a long time. In university, Tristan had created an Etsy store selling niche electronic musical instruments — modular synthesizers. We thought bigger for Omnitone: New brand, new products, a unification of what we bring to the table. 

Omnitone is still going strong. I encourage you, reader, to check out our website (omnitone.ca). It’s been about 2.5 years since we started it. Work wise, it’s a super creative, day-to-day, businessy role; it has a technical element, but one limitation is that I don’t get to talk face-to-face with people that much.

I found that I had some extra time, so I talked to Tenato about joining part-time. Even though it’s a new role for me, it feels natural. I mean, I was raised here, so it’s not that surprising. As we often say at Tenato, it’s hard to read the label from inside the jar. In my role as Innovation Strategist, I’ve been learning a lot by reading clients’ labels — and offering some fresh perspective on Tenato’s own.

NOTE from Jacqueline: We are thrilled to have Elizabeth on our team. As a technology innovator and Mechatronics Engineer, her training and mindset is opening boundless possibilities and perspectives on today’s changing technologies. If you’d like to reach out to us, or chat to Liz, contact us any time.