Nexion Solutions provides defense against violence

According to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, more than 10 million adults in the United States experience domestic violence annually. Even more shocking is that one out of every two female murder victims in the United States is killed by an intimate partner.

Liz Kohler is actively working to decrease those alarming numbers.

Kohler is the founder and CEO of Nexion Solutions, a company developed to protect the safety of victims of domestic violence and high-risk witnesses as they work with the criminal justice system. Launched in 2022, the company has developed a wearable, GPS-enabled device that allows the user to immediately alert authorities when the wearer is in danger. The product, known as NightWatch, has already saved lives during its pilot program.

For Kohler, the cause is a deeply personal one.

The wearable technologies industry veteran with extensive experience in healthcare and emergency response technologies lost her sister due to domestic violence in 2007. The loss prompted her into advocacy. The work connected her with people experiencing ongoing violence, including human trafficking survivors, high-risk witnesses facing witness intimidation, as well as those suffering at the hands of a domestic partner.

After a particularly harrowing case, Kohler was left feeling helpless.

“I thought, ‘there really should be a better way to protect people in the world. If they have to leave the house, we should be able to still protect them,’” Kohler said. “This is where my 17 years of professional experience collided with this woman’s story. I thought to myself, ‘I think I know how to protect these people.’”

She used her talents to develop a plan she knew would change lives and protect people in danger.

“You can only sit with things for so long before you are motivated to do something about it. So, this is me doing something about it,” she said.

The product was initially piloted with the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s office and the Sojourner Family Peace Center, Wisconsin’s largest nonprofit provider of domestic violence prevention and intervention services. During the pilot program, a NightWatch user was abducted by her abuser. The technology immediately notified authorities that the woman was in danger. Through swift communication and GPS technology, the Milwaukee Police Department was able to rescue the woman. 

The success of the pilot solidified the already strong support the company received from its pilot partners and created opportunities to launch pilots in other states.

The Shorewood-based startup has some of the industry’s biggest names supporting its efforts. The NightWatch device is being produced by Samsung. AT&T and FirstNet are supporting the company’s connectivity efforts.

Today the company has three employees, which includes two full-time engineers. The rapidly scaling company will add an additional two employees by the close of quarter two and plans to launch NightWatch commercially before the close of 2023.

The target market for this technology, government agencies and victim services organizations, are known to have limited budgets, but Kohler isn’t worried.

“As it turns out, there is already money that is allocated for victim and witness support at a state level, at a city level and at a federal level,” Kohler explained.

“In Wisconsin, we actually had $5 million that was allocated in the last governor’s budget, specifically for things that might come up to support victim and witness services. Last year, some of that money went unspent because there was nothing to spend it on,” she continued.

“So, we are giving them something to spend it on, but the response that I have gotten from our partners is that the cost is very low when you balance it against the fact that every time we lose someone to violence, it costs municipalities $52,000, which is a national average… I’ve heard a homicide court case can cost up to $1,000,000 in terms of all of the fees that are involved…,” she said.

“One of our pilot partners said, ‘at some point in the very near future, this is just going to be another line item of things that we buy. It’ll just be like Kevlar or body cams or whatever,” she said.

The company has already identified future vertical markets for this technology, but Kohler is focused on providing this life-saving technology to domestic abuse survivors and high-risk witnesses first.  That doesn’t mean the company is limiting the scope of its growth, “This is a global problem, and our goal is to be a global company,” she said.

To learn more about Nexion Solutions and NightWatch, connect with the company here.