Darren Entwistle doesn’t walk or talk like a man headed for retirement. It’s mid-May, and he’s bounding downstairs from the 26th-floor event space above his office at Telus Garden. The patio overlooking downtown Vancouver is open and breezy. Entwistle, 64, would step away from leading Telus Corporation as president and CEO at the end of June, after 26 years at the helm, with former CIBC chief Victor Dodig taking over as his successor.
He’s been pouring his energy into every detail of this $27-billion communications technology company since he took charge 26 years ago. Smaller details include championing this very tower to be built to Platinum-score Leadership and Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards—the city’s highest level—and filling the space with sculptures from Indigenous artists in B.C. Bigger details include transforming Telus from a copper-wired two-province telecom into a fibre-optic and wireless data technology company that operates in 45 countries. Throughout these years, he drove the company to become more than a business. He made it a model for doing good for society through its services and philanthropy.
A few weeks from now, Entwistle should have time to reflect, and to enjoy sunny days walking his dog. He’s fiercely protective of his private life, but such an idyllic future seems implausible. As he strides into his office in an athletically tailored navy suit, sans tie, he bristles with the intensity of a man about to take charge of Telus—not leave it.
Entwistle was 38 when he arrived in Vancouver in the year 2000, leaving senior roles at Cable and Wireless plc in the United Kingdom. Telus, at the time operating only in Alberta, needed direction after its 1999 merger with BC Tel. He was eager to rewire it for new technologies and new markets.
“The overwhelming feeling was excitement,” he recalls. Entwistle held a vision for Telus to break out and go national, and going national meant going wireless. Regulations still keep Canadian landline businesses geographically bound. Just days into his new job, Entwistle began the process of acquiring Clearnet Communications to add that company’s wireless stronghold in the big Ontario and Quebec markets to Telus’s Western base. He knew, however, that he would need to disrupt his own company before continuing further.
“If we didn’t have the right culture, the strategy just wasn’t going to fire,” Entwistle recalls. He cleared out two-thirds of the leadership group within his first year to bring in a more diverse group willing to embrace risk and change.
“If you want to innovate, you have to have an elasticity of thinking,” he explains. “If you want to have elasticity of thinking, you better not be homogeneous—because you’ll all be chasing the same opportunities and missing the same threats.”
Today, many of us are seeing the results in our daily lives, in our investment accounts and in our communities. We’ll pay for groceries or read this story while taking for granted transformations that revolutionized communications across this country. Telus used to make 80 percent of its money from local and long-distance voice calls, but it drove into new growth areas in data and wireless, whittling its own core voice business down to 4 percent.
Of course, Telus didn’t invent wireless or fibre-optic data networks, but Entwistle drove a pace of innovation and growth that made it a world-beater among global telecom companies. Telus boasts that it generated a 661-percent total shareholder return since 2000, beating the TSX’s 492-percent return and trouncing the MSCI World Telecom Services Index’s return of just 41 percent.
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What made the difference? “I think we can embrace change better than the competition,” he states.
Unlike the other two big Canadian telecoms—Rogers Communications Inc and BCE Inc.—Telus doesn’t own baseball teams, TV networks or radio stations. It doesn’t pay the salaries of Auston Matthews or Vladimir Guerrero Jr. But don’t expect Telus to be disrupting any of those legacy businesses by buying the Canucks or CKNW. Entwistle lays out the questions his team asks themselves to narrow down the opportunities they’re evaluating: “Does it leverage our broadband networks, fibre and 5G? Is it adjacent to what we may already be doing? Is it a big opportunity where, if we’re successful, we can grow a lot? Does it have the size, the gravitas, the scale? Is the opportunity set exciting?”
Finally, there’s one last criterion that sets Telus apart—one that’s driven the company to change communities and lives around the world. “Okay, is this where we’re going to lean in?” Entwistle explains. “Is there a social purpose component to it that’s meaningful?”
That question shows how Telus looks for opportunities that serve a higher calling or that benefit society in some way. “That’s our social capitalism thesis,” he explains. “The progression of a business done right, supporting its communities or its societies, is going to have mutually inclusive, positive outcomes for both the business and the society.”
Two subsidiaries—Telus Health and Telus Agriculture and Consumer Goods—ticked every box for Entwistle. Health care and agriculture are ripe for digital disruption, and they’re also opportunities to do good in the community and put the company’s social capitalism model to work.
You or your pet may have already seen a doctor or veterinarian remotely through Telus Health or Telus Health MyPet. When you filled your prescription or visited a physiotherapist, Telus Health was likely involved in securely managing your records, facilitating communication among your health-care providers, or processing your claims. Telus Health alone reaches 170 million people across 200 countries.
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Telus Agriculture and Consumer Goods connects farmers, advisors, retailers and manufacturers with data management software that helps them optimize yields, reduce waste and manage environmental risks. Entwistle is notorious for his intense manner of expression, but as he explains its mission that intensity turns to righteous fervour: “Think about precision irrigation. Think about food security. Think about perishable goods,” he says.
“Here we are in today’s hyper-connected, super-empowered world. There is an imbalance between the demand for food and the supply of food that sees 33 percent of the food that’s produced ending up going to waste in landfills. It’s morally abysmal in a hungry world.”
Entwistle will leave a bursting trophy case of honours for his and Telus’s contributions to business and society. He was appointed to the Order of Canada in 2018. He received an International Horatio Alger Award in 2022, the Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee Medal in 2003 and the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal in 2012. Time named Telus among its World’s Most Sustainable Companies in 2024, ranking it 24th out of 500 globally and 2nd in Canada. The company consistently ranks in the first place on our own BCBusiness Top 100 list for companies earning the most revenue in B.C. Just days before Entwistle’s scheduled retirement, the BC Tech Association inducted him into its Hall of Fame.
When Entwistle finally vacates this office, his most meaningful memories will come from the individual lives he and his company have changed by leveraging its social capitalism model to do good. “The most important thing that’s happened in our professional lives is that we just took that thesis and we drove it to the nth degree,” he reflects.
Telus and its members have given $1.85 billion in targeted charitable donations since 2000. Meanwhile, its employees have volunteered more than any company in the world, clocking 2.5 million days of service.
Nine years ago, Telus held a launch in the event space upstairs for a program called Mobility for Good. It provides phones and data plans for youths aging out of foster care. Twenty-six former foster children spoke about their experiences. “I’ll have trouble getting through this without being emotional,” Entwistle cautions as he recalls the stories he heard that day. Before his company’s involvement, he hadn’t realized that these teens age out of care at 16 to 18 years old, typically hitting the streets without any support.
“The first thing we had here was a safety issue,” Entwistle says with amazement. “They had no way of staying connected.” The youths couldn’t reach friends, apply for jobs or contact schools.
The stories they told struck him profoundly. Telus gives free phones, plans and education about usage to participants across Canada, and has expanded the program to serve low-income seniors, Indigenous women at risk of or experiencing violence, and government-assisted refugees.
“It was the most emotional event I’ve ever been to—not at Telus, but that I’ve ever been to.” Entwistle emphasizes. “Just listening to their stories…” He pauses, just as he warned. “They’re just in my head for the rest of my life.”
It’s hard to imagine life outside of Telus for Entwistle. He’s rarely spoken a word in public about anything else in 26 years. The company and its mission embody his life’s work, and are all that exists of him, as far as most of the world can see.
Yet Entwistle says he’s confident that Telus will capably carry on with without him. He set its flywheel in motion when he first reshaped its identity around doing good, forging symbiotic relationships with customers and communities. “That really is what gave birth to our whole social purpose agenda at Telus, which was singularly the most important, defining moment in our culture,” he reflects. The ecosystem Entwistle built will continue to change lives long after he’s left this building.
