Willowview Consulting (WVC) has worked with the U.S. Special Operations community since 2008--as both a Science & Technology Advisor to the Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command (MARSOC) and Systems Engineers for the Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit (TALOS) at Special Operations Command (USSOCOM). If that felt like a lot of acronyms to you… welcome to the world of defense! With over a decade of experience tackling the hard engineering problems that face the speci

In today’s fast paced world of CAD tools and 3D printers, the term “Rapid Prototyping” is no joke. As a young engineer I often take for granted the incredible toolset at my disposal. I can take a design from the handwaving theoretical stage all the way to a detailed physical prototype in just a few days. That’s something designers and engineers in the industrial revolution era would likely have given an appendage for. I won’t pretend to understand the prototyping challeng

Just Enough. Two simple words, but heavy on meaning that took me a lifetime to learn. Thirty years of engineering development, failures and successes, to help me recognize what is worth spending time doing and what isn’t. My team is sick of hearing me say it I have no doubt. When I was a Project Manager at Hewlett Packard, we had a similar saying – “don’t shake the jello”, meaning that for many of us engineers, if you give us time to change something, we will. It can always b

The ability to see events in the future. We see it in science fiction movies all of the time and I still don’t know how I personally feel about it – is it better to know what is coming or would that actually take some of the fun out of living? I can honestly say that the single hardest thing I have encountered as a mother is that my children seem unable to learn from my experiences. Which got me thinking… I recently had the privilege of facilitating a group of highly skilled,

As I attend SOFIC in Tampa this year, I am reminded what a privilege it is to work in the Special Operations community. I have supported SOCOM, specifically the U.S. Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command as the Science and Technology Advisor for the past nine years, and in those years, I have learned a tremendous amount. I feel so honored to have worked with a number of incredible operators on a myriad of different projects over the years. I am also married to a r