Tannette is an independent writer with diverse experience in the newspaper industry and skills in new media, particularly online social networking. She is an avid user of Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn and has been recognized nationally among journalists building their brands on Twitter.

         Tannette was one of the first “traditional journalists in the Milwaukee area to embrace twitter as a fundamental part of their work," according to a December 2008 feature story on her by Magazine SOHO a Milwaukee-based publication that highlights entrepreneurs and growing businesses throughout the U.S.

         Among her fellow journalists, Tannette is considered a trailblazer - "someone who has pushed the practice by using social media to report and tap into the collective intelligence of the online community," according to BeatBlogging.org, an online site that highlights innovative beat reporters.

Before venturing into the Web 2.0 world, Tannette spent nearly 19 years as a reporter and award-winning columnist for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. For 11 of those years,  she penned a weekly column that highlighted the struggles and triumphs of small and minority-owned businesses in the Milwaukee area.

 Last year, the scope of her column was expanded to show how small businesses and start-ups are using networking, including Web 2.0 tools, to tap the expertise needed to grow. Through social media, the column regularly was among the most-read business stories on jsonline, the online version of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Craving change and the need to develop her entrepreneurial pursuits, Tannette opted to take a voluntary buyout from the Journal Sentinel in July. She now seeks to use her writing skills, creative thinking and working knowledge of social media and social networking sites, tools and applications to help organizations promote their message within the online community.

Even so, her columns  on minority business and urban entrepreneurs will long be remembered. Tannette’s dedication to increasing public awareness and understanding of small businesses and business enterprises in communities of color earned her numerous awards and accolades.

    In 2004, she won first place in the business writing category of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) “Salute to Excellence’’ awards competition, which recognizes outstanding work in categories for print, radio, television and new media. Tannette placed first among writers at newspapers with circulations of 150,000 or higher: writers from the Washington Post placed second and third in her category.

In 2000, Tannette was named “Small Business Journalist of the Year” for the State of Wisconsin by the United States Small Business Administration.

Other awards include a Certificate of Merit from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers in 2006 in the “Best in Business Columns” category; third place in the NABJ 2002 “Salute to Excellence’’ awards contest; and first place from the Inland Press Association for a series of reports on welfare reform in Wisconsin in 1997.

Tannette’s work has taken her to high places – from the corner offices of CEOs of Fortune 500 companies to the White House, where she was among the nation's most prominent African-American columnists (the Trotter Group) who were invited to a press briefing in 2002 with former Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice, who was White House National Security Advisor at the time. That same group of columnists also participated in press briefings with Democratic Presidential Candidate, Barack Obama (now President Obama) and Senator Hilary Rodham Clinton (now Secretary of State) during the 2007 NABJ Convention in Las Vegas.

Born just outside of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and reared in Chicago’s ethnically diverse, Hyde Park community, Tannette is a graduate of Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois, where she received a bachelor’s of arts degree in journalism. She is married to Jean R. Elie Jr., a Chicago bank executive, and together they have two teenage sons.

In addition to column writing, Tannette did a stint as an associate lecturer in the Communication Department at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside in Kenosha from 2004 to 2007.

 Today, Tannette is a much sought-after speaker and regularly speaks about social media as a business tool at conferences and seminars. She is scheduled to speak at a Sept. 17 social media presentation and luncheon hosted by the Better Business Bureau of Wisconsin and at a social media forum on Sept. 30 sponsored by the Chicago Association of Black Journalists.

       Beatblogging.org, an online site that highlights innovative beat reporters, acknowledged Tannette on its weekly Leaderboard feature.

              “Elie is part of an emerging breed of reporters where it just makes sense for them to jump onto social networks,” Beatblogging said in recognizing Tannette.

           “Many of the people she covers use social media, and the only way for her to truly understand social media is for her to utilize it n her daily work too.”