About Elizabeth

Elizabeth Raymond is currently a Manufacturing Product Engineer at Coravin, a title that “is start-up code for she does everything.” After graduating from Olin in 2013, Elizabeth began working for Hewlett-Packard and after almost a year and a half, moved on to where she is now. During her time at Olin, Elizabeth ended up majoring in Mechanical Engineering and was involved heavily in research on and off campus, Education Discovery and working/volunteering abroad, especially in Kenya. Although currently involved in the wine industry, Elizabeth’s passions lie overseas, and starting in high school, would travel to Kenya any summer and winter break she could raise the money. There, she realized the exact application of entrepreneurship she wants to implement.

Elizabeth at Olin

Coming into Olin, Elizabeth thought she was going to be a Bioengineer. However, in the beginning of her sophomore year, she realized that she’d be in her 30s after coming out of medical school and paying off her student loans, but she “wanted to make an impact now.” As a result, she dropped all of her classes that had to do with Bioengineering– which happened to be most of them– and didn’t know what to do with herself. That was when Linda Canavan suggested that she join Lawrence Neeley’s new class. It was the course that designed what is now known as Products and Markets. Despite not having taken User Oriented Collaborative Design, which was a prerequisite,  she was allowed to take the class to provide a non-UOCD perspective.
She defines her time at Olin as just a back and forth between Ben Linder and Lawrence. She went to Africa in the summers and fell in love with a village in Kenya. Her entrepreneurship class at the time, Fundamentals of Business Entrepreneurship (FBE), had her and a partner making and selling a product in a two week span. They saw that the Olin gear at that time was abysmally boring and limited, and, consequently designed and sold new Olin t-shirts to current Olin students and their families. Coming out of FBE, she learned how to make use of the resources she had to create something. She recognized that teaching this kind of thinking to the people in her village in Kenya would be beneficial for them. She knew that she wanted to work in sustainability and make a difference in Kenya.

Elizabeth’s Career Journey

Her last semester at Olin played out like a senior’s worst nightmare. She knew where her heart lay, and try as she might, even with all of the in-country experience she had, Elizabeth could not find a job in the developing country sector. Finally, she took a job with Hewlett-Packard and was moved to Houston as part of their Sales and Marketing team. Her role was to act as a liaison between the technical team at within the company and everyone else. Working at a large company, Elizabeth discovered the frustration of being a very small cog in a large machine. There, a decision not to include a product feature could be relayed to the sales team after they have advertised it for an arbitrary amount of time. Seeking more transparency, more hands on work, a larger impact and the ability to move back to Boston, Elizabeth took a job with Coravin. “They had the sales and marketing team from Keurig and the engineering team from iRobot, “ she explained. “Keurig went from nothing to everywhere really quickly. Obviously somebody was doing something right.”
At Coravin, Elizabeth really enjoys the ability to use a wide range of skills. She manages their manufacturing, and so thinks 12 hours ahead often. In addition, a small love of graphic design, and clearly the ability to do it well, has allowed her to design the packaging of Coravin; “The instant gratification of designing something and then seeing all of the boxes come in is wonderful.”
Elizabeth still holds her desire of using the skill set she has- trained as a MechE, worked in sales and marketing, researched in sustainability and entrepreneurship- to empower school age children in Kenya. She does not see herself at Coravin forever, and dreams of the ability to help people help themselves; “If entrepreneurship is creating value from limited resources, then teaching that skill set in a fun and palatable way would be huge in enabling those in developing areas to succeed.”