RealWear, a Vancouver, Wash.-based headset maker that serves frontline workers at industrial companies, named Chris Parkinson as CEO.
Parkinson has served as RealWear’s CTO since co-founding the company in 2016. He has a doctorate degree in computations chemistry and molecular visualization from the University of Manchester, and his intellectual property led to the development of RealWear’s flagship line of headsets.
Prior to launching a startup, Parkinson led Kopin’s Golden-i team, a headset computing division within the publicly traded wearables components supplier. He also ran a RFID consulting company and was a senior engineer at Alien Technology.
Parkinson, based in eastern Washington, replaces previous chairman and CEO Andrew Chrostowski, who is retiring.
RealWear sells rugged head-mounted voice-controlled devices that project a virtual Android tablet below a user’s line of sight. Frontline workers in manufacturing, automotive, and healthcare use the product for remote video calling, document navigation, guided workflow, mobile forms, data visualization, and more. The company also launched the RealWear Cloud Platform to manage devices and data.
In a statement, Parkinson said two of his priorities as CEO will be incorporating artificial intelligence and sustainability into the company’s line of products.
RealWear planned to go public in a SPAC deal with Seattle-based Cascadia Capital but those plans fell apart in April.
Chrostowski said at the time that the company had “a strong plan forward” and was looking at other potential funding strategies.
RealWear reported $20.5 million in 2022 revenue, up from $13.9 million in 2019, according to an investor presentation made public when the SPAC was announced.
