leigh christie: Creating an Inclusive and Prosperous Global Community Enabled by Technology, With a Focus on Projects That Advance the UN Sustainable Development Goals

We are MistyWest. An engineering design consultancy that exists to create an inclusive and prosperous global community enabled by technology, with a focus on projects that advance the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

By empowering our world-class research and engineering team, we create technically complex intelligent connected devices that accelerate the world’s transition to a sustainable future. We combine our deep knowledge of physics, engineering and manufacturing to overcome technical barriers and turn concepts into products, providing full-stack hardware solutions for our clients.

Our core areas of technical expertise include Optics, Embedded Vision, AWS/Azure IoT, Low Power Electronics, and Wireless Connectivity (Bluetooth, WiFi, Cellular and Satellite).

Tell us about yourself?

I’ve always had an intense desire to use my engineering skills and to direct my ideas towards creating a more sustainable and prosperous future for humankind. I’ve always known it’s possible to create inclusive abundance for the world.

If you could go back in time a year or two, what piece of advice would you give yourself?

If you think you are focused, you’re not… focus more. Say “no” more often. If no one is saying “you say no too often” you’re probably not saying “no” often enough.

What problem does your business solve?

We solve many problems for our clients. Examples: Device connectivity, lower power usage, usability, increased sensor performance and feature-richness. We design, engineer and build intelligent and connected devices for our clients.

What is the inspiration behind your business?

I wanted the type of company that I thought I’d enjoy working at myself: a company with distributed authority where we put people first.

What is your magic sauce?

We have created a client engagement and project engineering system that is complex and difficult to replicate, but is also streamlined and efficient. We are able to deliver extraordinary outcomes for our clients and our track record speaks for itself. We also make our enormous network available to our clients free of charge. We also have our own white-labelable products in-house that can be customized for our clients such as MistySOM and WristyWearable.

What is the plan for the next 5 years? What do you want to achieve?

We will come to be the most dominate engineering design consultancy for intelligent and connected devices in North America. And while doing so we’ll enjoy the ride while also helping achieve the UN Sustainable Development goals.

What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced so far?

scaling MistyWest. It’s harder than you’d think to find a balance between finding new clients, providing extraordinary service to existing clients and hiring new employees. Especially on the backdrop of one global macro crisis after another.

How do people get involved/buy into your vision?

We want the smartest, hardest working, most tenacious engineers to reach out to us. Regardless if you are a potential client or potential employee, drop us a line and let us know you’d like to find a way to work with us. Together we’ll do great things.