A journey of maps and music: How Elisebeth Sullivan set her path in the future of maps

Maps and music may seem unrelated, but for Elisebeth Sullivan they’ve always held a close connection that’s guided her to becoming a Director of Program Management at TomTom. Elisebeth is now onboarding customers, helping the likes of Microsoft make the most of TomTom Orbis Maps. We talked to Elisebeth to hear her story, learning how she turned her personal passions into a mission-led career.

Elisebeth’s childhood home was filled with both classical music and intricate designs of maps. With a professional pianist mother and a father who was a design engineer for the Massachusetts Highway Department, her childhood was a stimulating blend of arts and sciences. “I called my home the bridge of maps and music,” she recalls.    

"Before I fell in love with maps, I wanted to sing professionally," she shares. And while music remained a source of joy, she couldn’t resist a degree geared towards maps. “Geography answered the curiosity of the world in me, and maps were the mechanism through which I could visually make conclusions,” she explains.  

The bridge between maps and music

“I learned that what I was passionate about was making maps accessible to more people. Much like why I was drawn to music. Both should be a resource that is available to all people, and created, used and enjoyed by all people,” Elisebeth shares. 

Today, she is living her mission to democratize mapping at TomTom. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves… How did Elisebeth’s professional journey start?  

Following the map

Early Esri ArcView/Map classes at university and a degree in geography prepped Elisebeth for a job at mapping pioneer Tele Atlas, joining in 2007. “I was a young, eager map-sourcing researcher,” she recalls. 

One of her projects involved comparing the company’s mapped roads, addresses, postal codes and municipalities in the US to the United States Postal Service’s delivery routes. “I thought this was brilliant, working with a team to create means of early change detection,” she says.  

As Elisebeth’s career progressed, so did her responsibilities. She was working in project management when TomTom acquired Tele Atlas in 2008. “TomTom was the right place for me, as it was not only a career but it offered me a growth plan from day one,” she reflects.  

Leading in the right role at TomTom

As a Director of Program Management, Elisebeth now directs a team dedicated to onboarding customers to TomTom’s flagship Orbis Maps.

“It’s a role that really suits my passion, as it literally gets more maps into as many people’s hands as possible,” she shares. “If I’m successful, I’ve made the organization more efficient and, for the customer, alleviated the time and energy it takes to onboard to our maps.” 

One of the most exciting parts of Elisebeth’s role is the ongoing collaboration with Microsoft. When the tech giant chose TomTom to power their location-based services years ago, “I was a part of the original onboarding team, and I’ve been working closely with them ever since,” she shares. Now, Elisebeth is leading the charge as Microsoft transitions to Orbis Maps.   

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The world is already a very different place to where we were when we started. We have new aspects of our expanded partnership with Microsoft that we couldn’t have imagined before, such as solutions in the automotive sector, integration of our map with Microsoft’s flagship products and adoption of an extended set of TomTom products, such as traffic. I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to be side by side with Microsoft when they experience their first successes with Orbis maps and support them through their launch.

Elisebeth Sullivan

Director of Program Management, TomTom

Looking down the line

Elisebeth is focused on continuing to deliver exceptional onboarding experiences in even less time, helping TomTom and its customers innovate faster and reach more people. The immediate goal revolves around Orbis Maps, while her broader vision remains at play.  

“I hope to learn more about our customers and find ways to incorporate those learnings into our products to bring even more value for our customers month over month,” she says. “For my team, I would like to emphasize that at TomTom we are not only known for creating fantastic products, but also for producing a world class delivery and onboarding experience.” While staying attuned to customer needs, Elisebeth will also be staying in tune herself, sharing that she will “do a lot more singing in the fall.” 

Living and working in harmony

Instead of the singing stage, TomTom provided Elisebeth with a different kind of platform – one to harmonize her interest in mapping with her mission to make the world a more accessible place. She’s able to best do so in a supportive environment.  

“TomTom is a great place to work. Your voice feels heard, you feel seen, you feel valued, and yet you are constantly being pushed to be better than your previous self…I think it’s a place where we can really challenge each other and support each other,” Elisebeth shares.  

“When I look around the company, I see professional mapmakers with decades of experience, who understand the complexity of creating a global map along with the difficulties and hurdles, so that we don’t assume it will be easy.”