Bhavana Rao is a Senior Advisor, Technical Services at First Key Consulting. She brings a unique blend of experience across food, cannabis, coffee, brewing, IT consulting, and industrial advisory. Over 10 years, she has worked within startups, scale-ups, and established firms.

Bhavana’s expertise is in operational due diligence and continuous improvement, technology product management, ERP integration and change management. Prior to joining First Key, Bhavana worked in GHD’s advisory team, supporting commercial strategy and digital initiatives for large multinational corporations and government contracts. She began her career in IT consulting and brings a cross-functional perspective that connects operations, systems thinking, and commercialization. She has worked with clients across Canada, India, the UAE, and South Africa. Earlier, Bhavana was Director of Product Development at Christina Lake Cannabis, where she set up and scaled a CAD$15 million facility from buildout into operations. She also led R&D and laboratory operations at Blissco Cannabis Corp, acquired by Canopy Growth. She was part of the team that grew BC’s first hops testing laboratory at Hops Connect.

Bhavana holds an MBA and a Master of Food Science from the University of British Columbia, and a Bachelor of Engineering in Chemical Engineering from BMS College of Engineering in Bangalore.