Always Striving for Excellence | Layne Lewis

As the ship’s captain, Layne has cultivated endurance, unmatched commitment, and loyalty to her people and WVC customers. She is also a valued community leader, volunteering to serve and sponsoring organizations such as Girls on the Run.

Layne founded Willowview Consulting LLC in 2003. “When I was in corporate America, I realized that I wanted to have more control over my destiny. After finishing my MBA, I started my first company and I have had a lot of fun figuring out how to organize teams to solve hard problems ever since.” Layne received her MBA from the University of Washington and her B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Arizona. With more than 35 years of experience in the engineering field, she has worked for large corporations such as Booz Allen Hamilton, Hewlett Packard, as well as small start­ups. She has led all facets of the product development lifecycle during her career. She has been a trusted science and technology advisor to the Marine Corps Special Operations Command (MARSOC) for over a decade.

Working For the Team

Layne considers herself, and her team reflects, that she is a servant leader. She prioritizes removing roadblocks enabling her team to get to meaningful solutions as quickly as possible. “We pride ourselves on being an “A-Team” organization. “I am more than just a leader; my team knows I am here to support and contribute as needed to get us where we need to go” Layne proudly states. “WVC has a company culture where life comes first. We strive to find the balance between work and life. Having done the corporate grind, I know what it feels like to have a company support your personal life. This philosophy has helped us stay ahead of the game as remote work has become the norm and we have people working for us around the country and world. We were already seeking to accommodate everyone’s life and allow for work flexibility. This has helped us thrive.”

Being a great leader often starts with a person driving that inspiration. For Layne, her parents were her heroes. “They instilled in me a respect for every individual and to work alongside them to achieve success, and not be quick to judge. Because my mother married my father at a young age, she dropped out of college to raise me, my sister, and my brother. After we started school, she went back to college and became a R.N. Not stopping there, she went to graduate school to become a Nurse Practitioner.” At the age of 52, Layne’s father died after a long and protracted illness, and her mother, who was also 52 went back to school to get her PhD in heath economics. Layne explains, “My father, who was a PhD applied mathematician, fought every day to make it the best it could be, in spite of his health issues. He instilled in me an unbelievable work ethic and toughness that has served me well over the years. Once he passed, my mother, who had been so frustrated with the process we had to go through during my father’s illness and degrading health, vowed to learn all that she could to enact change to make things better for the future of healthcare. My father’s illness and my mother’s quest for change, made a huge impression on the kind of person and leader I wanted to be.” Layne has taken WVC to new heights with the motivation and mindset instilled by her parents.

Building A Brand

WVC has worked hard to earn its client’s trust and respect, ranging from privately held large corporations to small technology start-ups and government agencies. Layne expands, “we work with clients to develop innovative strategies and diligently execute them to achieve mutual success.” The company began with an opportunity to evaluate a large government contractor’s technology roadmap and design; from there, additional engineers, business analysts, and program managers were added to the team, enabling the business to expand quickly.

WVC currently provides engineering solutions, program management, and training to companies and government agencies in the United States and around the world. The WVC team provides a wealth of experience in government and commercial domains. Layne expands, “we fully understand the product definition, development, and scaling processes.” WVC’s “Just Enough” methodology and an agile engineering approach, offer rapid prototyping, to get the optimal solution into the client’s hands quickly and under budget. This approach allows product development investments to concentrate more on product validation rather than design and proof of concept. “We have found that this process accelerates our client’s overall objective to develop products that work.”

WVC’s team have diverse backgrounds and education. The team includes previous Special Operations Forces Operators, Aerospace, Mechanical, Electrical, and Systems Engineers, Computer Science and Information Systems experts, and Data Scientists and Programmers. “A few of our goals are to continue to branch out into new industries we have not worked in before. We want to scale our health and wellness efforts, including our application “plneapp” where people can create meaningful artifacts of their activity to improve their health and wellbeing” says Layne. “We want to continue to grow our core focus on innovation. As we grow and adapt, we intend to maintain our values and culture in the rapidly changing world of technology we live in.”

Towards the Future

In addition to continuing to develop new technology, “WVC has several long-term contracts with the military and customers in the private sector,” states Layne. “I am incredibly proud of the brand we have created in these spaces. We are well known for our expertise, something that did not come easily nor without excellent work ethic from the entire WVC team. We are extremely proud of our achievements and they are a great testament to our company’s mission and values.”

Layne and her team continue working on expanding the company and its services. “We live in an ever-changing world, and our hope is to stay ahead and adapt where needed, to remain curious, never cease learning, work hard and continue to serve our team and clients as we forge ahead into the future.