July 9, 2025 • 13 mins
In this episode, AR for Enterprise Alliance Executive Director Mark Sage sits down with Kristen Naeini, RealWear's Head of Sales for the Americas. RealWear is a leading force in voice-enabled, wearable technology for frontline workers. Kristen shares her personal journey from engineering into enterprise XR, and how RealWear’s mission is rooted in enabling safer, more efficient work environments—especially in challenging industrial settings. Her insights underscore the power of AR/XR when delivered hands-free and heads-up, supporting use cases from oil rigs to factory floors.
Kristen also talks about the value of industry collaboration, common standards, and shared learning. She highlights the convergence of AI and AR to drive intelligent assistance in real time. She calls for the industry to double down on user-centric design, interoperability, and educating customers about practical, scalable deployments—not just flashy demos. Video still from the RealWear website. Please visit the AREA.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:09):
Hello everybody. It's Mark Sage,the Executive Director of the AREA.
And we're here with ourlatest Fireside Chat.
Our Fireside Chats are where we speak tosome of the industry experts about what
they're doing, how they'redriving the industry forward,
and getting those insightsand little snack bites.
And today I'm very lucky tobe with Kristen. Absolutely
(00:31):
amazing kind of work at RealWear.
I'm going to ask you to introduceyourself and then we'll get on with some
questions focusing on your, asI say, amazing work at RealWear.
So please tell us a little bitabout yourself and your work.
I know I've got thatdifficult last name too, so.
I was avoiding that, so.
I noticed. Yep. So I'm Kristen Naeini,
(00:54):
a little bit of too many vowels in thelast name, but that's how you say it.
And I work over here at RealWearbased out of Vancouver, Washington,
and I've been here almostsix years, which man,
every year that ticksby is just unbelievable.
Coming to a startup for thefirst time in my career,
you never know how it's going to go.So I'm really happy to still be here.
(01:17):
I have the privilege of havingNorth and South America under my
responsibility.
That means all things from ourpartners to our customers and our
account executives and support team,
everybody's here to support the Americas.So that's what I'm doing over here.
Fantastic. Okay, well let'sget on with some questions.
(01:40):
And we all know the situation in themarket with the Polyol lens and Microsoft
dropping out, but we know they'reactually turning to RealWear,
which is really cool.
So talk a little bit about what'sdriving that shift and how you're helping
customers make that transitionto assisted reality.
Oh, that's a good one. Are youhearing out there on your side too,
a lot of buzz about this? Or what haveyou gotten out there on your side?
(02:02):
Well, certainly from anecosystem perspective,
we've got people that arelooking for replacements
and for at the moment is not easy.
There's not many companies out theredoing true augmented reality. So yeah,
we're definitely hearing assisted realitywhen it's the right use case is of
great interest and we know RealWearis one of the leading players in that.
(02:25):
So yes, I'm hearing a lot.
I'm sure you can explain to us someof the key things that you are seeing.
Yeah, definitely.
It's crazy because it kind of allhappened mid-January all at once
and we got a bunch of influx of,
I would say not onlycustomers but also partners,
which we thought we might have to goout and do some work and see where
(02:50):
some opportunity would be to grow thebusiness with those partners that were
lacking that solution.
But they actually really startedcoming in to us and reaching out.
So I would say it started there.
I started getting a lot of email inboundand LinkedIns and just straight up
calls and saying, Hey,we need to fill this gap.
There's a couple of products thathave fallen off the map lately for us,
(03:14):
or we thought we would do morebusiness and we're really not,
and we're really gettinga lot of requests for
hands-free solutions that are a littlebit more simple. And so we started
signing up some new partners, whichthat takes a while to get traction,
to get them trained up to get them units.
And so I think we're going to see thatkind of move into execution and getting
(03:38):
more units out with the partnerscoming the second half of the year.
But then on the customerside, it was the same thing.
It was either customers inquiringthrough who they originally
purchased their HoloLens from.
So those people started pingingus left and and then we got some
customers straight up justfinding us and saying, Hey look,
(03:59):
I did a rollout with HoloLens.
There was really highvisibility on this project.
That's kind of the common theme.
We spent a lot of money showcasing A,we brought it to the government, or B,
we brought it into our executive cornerand brought it to our C-suites and now
there's all these eyes on it and now wereally need to shift that project to a
(04:22):
new solution.
And out of everybody we'refinding you fit the niche.
And so those calls havejust been left and right.
I think a big majority of theyear actually so far, like I said,
since January has beenrevolving around this shift.
So it's been pretty amazing.
That's really cool.
(04:43):
And I guess going into that into alittle bit more detail for the people who
don't know how much about real work,
talk a little bit about the key use casesand problems that you're solving and
that most important bit is buyingthe ROI, the return on investment.
You talk about the C-suite,the technology is fine,
but they want to understand the benefits.
So talk about that from an assistedreality, real world device perspective.
(05:07):
Yeah, I think also the background ofthis is everybody in this industry has
experienced this at this point,
but that's why it's super importantto also make sure we have people in
our ecosystem. For example, youare a great example of that.
You've built this reference in theindustry where you understand the whole
(05:27):
solution.
You don't understand just one thing orone headset or one piece of software.
So these partners that we're signingare really system integrators.
They're offering full solutionsand that's helping with proving,
showing and deploying for ROI,
we just keep signing box pushers orresellers that are just doing that
(05:49):
as we all have known by now,that's just a recipe for,
I call it a red flag, thatthat's not going to go well.
So what we're doing is we're lookingat where the HoloLens was used,
whether it's behind the scenes and wesaw a lot of training classrooms and
practicals and then goinginto who's using it out in the
(06:11):
field,
who's using it on the frontline andlooking at it in these two different
lenses. And what we're findingis in the frontline right
now,
there's been a lot of ROIshowing in a couple of really key
industries.
I would say transportationreally grabbed onto HoloLens,
(06:33):
whether it be ground air, maritime,
and they went there for alot of different use cases.
But these have all been sort ofshifting into taking that and
putting into remotecollaboration or remote training.
So let me give you an exampleof that. I have one customer,
I can't say their exact name,
(06:53):
but they're a public transitcompany and they were
previously using other solutions likeHoloLens and they'd use it in the
classroom. But then when youget them out there in the field,
these new employees,
they're going from the old school way ofdoing things now to zero emissions for
(07:14):
example. And this is kindof new for everybody.
We've got a lot of new components,a lot of new technology.
So when they found theyput them out in the field,
they would have to keep calling upthe trainers left and right after the
training.
And so if they're able to userealware to then call back into the
trainers and get eyes the beat onthe street of what do we need to do,
(07:37):
it's eliminating them from travelingto each location in the region.
So as you know,
you're going to be able to showROI with quicker turnaround,
less travel. You've got employees thatcan take calls and help from anywhere.
And just calculating thattime versus no downtime
(07:59):
time with travel and eliminating risk.
It's pretty much our calculatorfor a recipe for success.
It certainly the CO2 bitas well that you mentioned.
I think that's now for organizationsunderstanding their CO2 footprint
and being able to reduce that.
Yeah, yeah.
(08:19):
It's interesting because transportation,
I well know is an industrythat's really kind of gearing up,
heating up and stuff like that.
Can you maybe go into a little bit moredetail and what's making these rollouts
scale now?
We've been what we call pilotpurgatory for a number of years.
It's a few devices, we getsome really good intro,
(08:40):
you get some really good interest.It's not scaling up to volume.
Is there something you see that'schanged or what is this scale up
looking like for you guys?
Yeah, a lot has changed in thelast year from what I've seen.
I don't know if you're seeing somethingparallel. There's a couple things.
(09:00):
One, I don't know if I should go there,
but I feel like sometimes politicsplays a little bit of a field in our
verticals and where you're talkingabout the zero emissions. For example,
grants were on hold and then they weren't.
And there's a lot of drive for certaininitiatives from a grant and a government
perspective that's created ashift. It's created buying shifts.
(09:22):
As you know,
we're dealing with things like tariffsand we're dealing with things that very
much impact the industry asa whole. But besides that,
what seemed to have happened isthat this whole buzz about AI
and new tech people reallystarted to get on the tech
bandwagon and change managementbandwagon hardcore at the end of last
(09:46):
year in the beginning of this year.
And what that did was youwould see in the beginning all
of these headsets would kind of just golike here IT department figure out how
we're going to do this and here's anothertask on your list of a hundred things
you need to do.And that would get lost in the mix
(10:07):
or it didn't have the correctbacking to really drive
success.
So what we see now is companiesare dedicating resources,
and I think this is the biggest changewe've seen is they're dedicating
resources for process improvementswith a technology baseline.
So I'm not the expert in this space.
(10:30):
I know you introducedus all as the experts.
I don't know if any of us are reallythe experts in this space because it's a
new space,
But we come from different backgroundsthat have given us some insight into how
this goes. And when youhave the backing of,
you have a project manager,dedicated program manager dedicated,
(10:52):
even a device manager, dedicatedsubject matter experts, champions,
all of these people in yourwheelhouse that are there to
advocate for the project for not onlythe company's sake but the what's in it
for the user's sake and theycare about that experience,
that's where you're going to see thesepilots actually take form and scale.
(11:15):
And that's been reflectinga lot in this past year.
And I think that's a great answer.
I do think there's a combination ofthings that you've said in there.
Budgets are becoming available inparticular industries for innovation.
That's kind of been a littlebit of a bumpy journey.
I think there's definitely a bettereducation of people understanding this
(11:36):
technology when you get the leading CEOsof the biggest tech companies saying
that augmented reality is going tobe the way forward kind of helps.
But it's taken a feral whileI think that AI and AR bit
is really interesting,
we are kind of the AR and theassisted is often the delivery of that
(11:58):
information,
but in a way that they can be handsfree and do kind of simple tasks.
So I think that's another reallyinteresting and good point.
Ultimately.
And I think we started and made thisproduct very simple and I think it's just
getting more simple,
which is great because a lot oftimes we see as technology advances,
things get more difficult becausethere's so many things that you have,
(12:22):
whether it be on your phoneor your ring doorbell,
you can't even find or understand thewhole conglomerate of everything it can
do.
So you kind of use your camera and youuse it on auto and you don't dig deep.
We get it. That's how users use products.
So I love that about us thatwe didn't get more complicated.
We're only getting more simple.
(12:43):
And I feel like that helps the industryin general just keep moving forward.
I agree,
and I think that's a lovely place tofinish in that the simplicity of it
is what's the greatest benefit and thatallows users to use it. So Kristen,
thank you very much indeed.
Look forward to inviting you back askind of real work continues to grow.
(13:05):
I know there's some exciting times withthe management changes and things like
that,
so please keep up the great work andthank you very much that all that RealWear
does for the industry and thankyou for spending some time today.
Thanks, Mark. It was nice to chat.
Hello everybody. It's Mark Sage,the Executive Director of the AREA.
And we're here with ourlatest Fireside Chat.
Our Fireside Chats are where we speak tosome of the industry experts about what
they're doing, how they'redriving the industry forward,
and getting those insightsand little snack bites.
And today I'm very lucky tobe with Kristen. Absolutely
(00:31):
amazing kind of work at RealWear.
I'm going to ask you to introduceyourself and then we'll get on with some
questions focusing on your, asI say, amazing work at RealWear.
So please tell us a little bitabout yourself and your work.
I know I've got thatdifficult last name too, so.
I was avoiding that, so.
I noticed. Yep. So I'm Kristen Naeini,
(00:54):
a little bit of too many vowels in thelast name, but that's how you say it.
And I work over here at RealWearbased out of Vancouver, Washington,
and I've been here almostsix years, which man,
every year that ticksby is just unbelievable.
Coming to a startup for thefirst time in my career,
you never know how it's going to go.So I'm really happy to still be here.
(01:17):
I have the privilege of havingNorth and South America under my
responsibility.
That means all things from ourpartners to our customers and our
account executives and support team,
everybody's here to support the Americas.So that's what I'm doing over here.
Fantastic. Okay, well let'sget on with some questions.
(01:40):
And we all know the situation in themarket with the Polyol lens and Microsoft
dropping out, but we know they'reactually turning to RealWear,
which is really cool.
So talk a little bit about what'sdriving that shift and how you're helping
customers make that transitionto assisted reality.
Oh, that's a good one. Are youhearing out there on your side too,
a lot of buzz about this? Or what haveyou gotten out there on your side?
(02:02):
Well, certainly from anecosystem perspective,
we've got people that arelooking for replacements
and for at the moment is not easy.
There's not many companies out theredoing true augmented reality. So yeah,
we're definitely hearing assisted realitywhen it's the right use case is of
great interest and we know RealWearis one of the leading players in that.
(02:25):
So yes, I'm hearing a lot.
I'm sure you can explain to us someof the key things that you are seeing.
Yeah, definitely.
It's crazy because it kind of allhappened mid-January all at once
and we got a bunch of influx of,
I would say not onlycustomers but also partners,
which we thought we might have to goout and do some work and see where
(02:50):
some opportunity would be to grow thebusiness with those partners that were
lacking that solution.
But they actually really startedcoming in to us and reaching out.
So I would say it started there.
I started getting a lot of email inboundand LinkedIns and just straight up
calls and saying, Hey,we need to fill this gap.
There's a couple of products thathave fallen off the map lately for us,
(03:14):
or we thought we would do morebusiness and we're really not,
and we're really gettinga lot of requests for
hands-free solutions that are a littlebit more simple. And so we started
signing up some new partners, whichthat takes a while to get traction,
to get them trained up to get them units.
And so I think we're going to see thatkind of move into execution and getting
(03:38):
more units out with the partnerscoming the second half of the year.
But then on the customerside, it was the same thing.
It was either customers inquiringthrough who they originally
purchased their HoloLens from.
So those people started pingingus left and and then we got some
customers straight up justfinding us and saying, Hey look,
(03:59):
I did a rollout with HoloLens.
There was really highvisibility on this project.
That's kind of the common theme.
We spent a lot of money showcasing A,we brought it to the government, or B,
we brought it into our executive cornerand brought it to our C-suites and now
there's all these eyes on it and now wereally need to shift that project to a
(04:22):
new solution.
And out of everybody we'refinding you fit the niche.
And so those calls havejust been left and right.
I think a big majority of theyear actually so far, like I said,
since January has beenrevolving around this shift.
So it's been pretty amazing.
That's really cool.
(04:43):
And I guess going into that into alittle bit more detail for the people who
don't know how much about real work,
talk a little bit about the key use casesand problems that you're solving and
that most important bit is buyingthe ROI, the return on investment.
You talk about the C-suite,the technology is fine,
but they want to understand the benefits.
So talk about that from an assistedreality, real world device perspective.
(05:07):
Yeah, I think also the background ofthis is everybody in this industry has
experienced this at this point,
but that's why it's super importantto also make sure we have people in
our ecosystem. For example, youare a great example of that.
You've built this reference in theindustry where you understand the whole
(05:27):
solution.
You don't understand just one thing orone headset or one piece of software.
So these partners that we're signingare really system integrators.
They're offering full solutionsand that's helping with proving,
showing and deploying for ROI,
we just keep signing box pushers orresellers that are just doing that
(05:49):
as we all have known by now,that's just a recipe for,
I call it a red flag, thatthat's not going to go well.
So what we're doing is we're lookingat where the HoloLens was used,
whether it's behind the scenes and wesaw a lot of training classrooms and
practicals and then goinginto who's using it out in the
(06:11):
field,
who's using it on the frontline andlooking at it in these two different
lenses. And what we're findingis in the frontline right
now,
there's been a lot of ROIshowing in a couple of really key
industries.
I would say transportationreally grabbed onto HoloLens,
(06:33):
whether it be ground air, maritime,
and they went there for alot of different use cases.
But these have all been sort ofshifting into taking that and
putting into remotecollaboration or remote training.
So let me give you an exampleof that. I have one customer,
I can't say their exact name,
(06:53):
but they're a public transitcompany and they were
previously using other solutions likeHoloLens and they'd use it in the
classroom. But then when youget them out there in the field,
these new employees,
they're going from the old school way ofdoing things now to zero emissions for
(07:14):
example. And this is kindof new for everybody.
We've got a lot of new components,a lot of new technology.
So when they found theyput them out in the field,
they would have to keep calling upthe trainers left and right after the
training.
And so if they're able to userealware to then call back into the
trainers and get eyes the beat onthe street of what do we need to do,
(07:37):
it's eliminating them from travelingto each location in the region.
So as you know,
you're going to be able to showROI with quicker turnaround,
less travel. You've got employees thatcan take calls and help from anywhere.
And just calculating thattime versus no downtime
(07:59):
time with travel and eliminating risk.
It's pretty much our calculatorfor a recipe for success.
It certainly the CO2 bitas well that you mentioned.
I think that's now for organizationsunderstanding their CO2 footprint
and being able to reduce that.
Yeah, yeah.
(08:19):
It's interesting because transportation,
I well know is an industrythat's really kind of gearing up,
heating up and stuff like that.
Can you maybe go into a little bit moredetail and what's making these rollouts
scale now?
We've been what we call pilotpurgatory for a number of years.
It's a few devices, we getsome really good intro,
(08:40):
you get some really good interest.It's not scaling up to volume.
Is there something you see that'schanged or what is this scale up
looking like for you guys?
Yeah, a lot has changed in thelast year from what I've seen.
I don't know if you're seeing somethingparallel. There's a couple things.
(09:00):
One, I don't know if I should go there,
but I feel like sometimes politicsplays a little bit of a field in our
verticals and where you're talkingabout the zero emissions. For example,
grants were on hold and then they weren't.
And there's a lot of drive for certaininitiatives from a grant and a government
perspective that's created ashift. It's created buying shifts.
(09:22):
As you know,
we're dealing with things like tariffsand we're dealing with things that very
much impact the industry asa whole. But besides that,
what seemed to have happened isthat this whole buzz about AI
and new tech people reallystarted to get on the tech
bandwagon and change managementbandwagon hardcore at the end of last
(09:46):
year in the beginning of this year.
And what that did was youwould see in the beginning all
of these headsets would kind of just golike here IT department figure out how
we're going to do this and here's anothertask on your list of a hundred things
you need to do.And that would get lost in the mix
(10:07):
or it didn't have the correctbacking to really drive
success.
So what we see now is companiesare dedicating resources,
and I think this is the biggest changewe've seen is they're dedicating
resources for process improvementswith a technology baseline.
So I'm not the expert in this space.
(10:30):
I know you introducedus all as the experts.
I don't know if any of us are reallythe experts in this space because it's a
new space,
But we come from different backgroundsthat have given us some insight into how
this goes. And when youhave the backing of,
you have a project manager,dedicated program manager dedicated,
(10:52):
even a device manager, dedicatedsubject matter experts, champions,
all of these people in yourwheelhouse that are there to
advocate for the project for not onlythe company's sake but the what's in it
for the user's sake and theycare about that experience,
that's where you're going to see thesepilots actually take form and scale.
(11:15):
And that's been reflectinga lot in this past year.
And I think that's a great answer.
I do think there's a combination ofthings that you've said in there.
Budgets are becoming available inparticular industries for innovation.
That's kind of been a littlebit of a bumpy journey.
I think there's definitely a bettereducation of people understanding this
(11:36):
technology when you get the leading CEOsof the biggest tech companies saying
that augmented reality is going tobe the way forward kind of helps.
But it's taken a feral whileI think that AI and AR bit
is really interesting,
we are kind of the AR and theassisted is often the delivery of that
(11:58):
information,
but in a way that they can be handsfree and do kind of simple tasks.
So I think that's another reallyinteresting and good point.
Ultimately.
And I think we started and made thisproduct very simple and I think it's just
getting more simple,
which is great because a lot oftimes we see as technology advances,
things get more difficult becausethere's so many things that you have,
(12:22):
whether it be on your phoneor your ring doorbell,
you can't even find or understand thewhole conglomerate of everything it can
do.
So you kind of use your camera and youuse it on auto and you don't dig deep.
We get it. That's how users use products.
So I love that about us thatwe didn't get more complicated.
We're only getting more simple.
(12:43):
And I feel like that helps the industryin general just keep moving forward.
I agree,
and I think that's a lovely place tofinish in that the simplicity of it
is what's the greatest benefit and thatallows users to use it. So Kristen,
thank you very much indeed.
Look forward to inviting you back askind of real work continues to grow.
(13:05):
I know there's some exciting times withthe management changes and things like
that,
so please keep up the great work andthank you very much that all that RealWear
does for the industry and thankyou for spending some time today.
Thanks, Mark. It was nice to chat.
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