IstariISTARIStrategyB2BGet in touch

Our Why

We rebuild complex systems to drive meaningful outcomes.

Istari is where we point at the systems we share — building citizen-centric civic tech for any topic where there’s real data: healthcare, housing, energy, transit. A scientific approach to build genuine understanding and a builder’s approach to designing fixes we can all get behind.

How we work

Clarity you can audit. Judgment that stays human.

We don’t ask for trust — we earn it, one transparent assumption at a time.

The good news in almost every “unfixable” system: someone, somewhere, has already solved a version of it. The work is rarely pure invention — it’s finding what works, adapting it honestly to local reality, and proving it before the politics calcify.

Principle 01

Radical transparency

We open-source our model assumptions. Every figure traces to a primary source; every estimate sits in the open where you can change it. If you can’t audit the data, you shouldn’t have to trust the strategy.

Principle 02

AI-augmented, human-led

We use AI to process vast datasets and accelerate modelling — but the strategic judgment, the why and the who, stays strictly human. We treat AI as a high-powered microscope, not the scientist looking through it.

Principle 03

A builder’s bias

We don’t stop at the diagnosis. We prototype the fix, make it something you can poke at, and design for a real first step — a pilot, a stream, a region — that people can actually rally around.

Who we are

Operators who’ve built and run systems at scale.

Three co-founders who met at Simon Fraser University and have since shipped software, engineered data, and de-risked infrastructure for some of the largest institutions in their fields — across healthcare, finance, and global technology.

8
industries, healthcare to financial services
3
continents — North America, Europe & Asia
25+
years of combined operating experience
M+
people touched by systems they’ve shipped

Edison Sie

Strategy · Cloud · Systems Risk

Secures and modernizes the cloud backbone of regulated, systemically important institutions — where “the system can’t go down” is a literal requirement.

  • Leads technology audit & advisory across the North American and Asian operations of a global financial institution.
  • Alumnus of Microsoft and Deloitte; ran multi-million-dollar cloud migrations and built security roadmaps with the Government of Canada.
  • Teaches cloud computing at BCIT.
Azure & cloudCybersecurityRegulated industriesSFU

Julian Cheng

Data · Analytics Engineering

Turns the raw data exhaust of a global consumer platform into decisions people can act on — the discipline that makes our “show your work” promise possible.

  • Six years at trivago, climbing from analyst to data engineering lead to analytics engineer.
  • Earlier analytics for Rocky Mountaineer; capital-markets exposure via the Montreal Exchange.
  • Works across North America and Europe; fluent in turning messy real-world data into clean models.
Data engineeringAnalyticsConsumer scaleEU + NA

Nathan Lee

Product · Healthcare Impact

Ships clinical software doctors actually use. He’s spent his career inside the exact system this project is about — so the healthcare work isn’t theoretical for us.

  • Senior product manager for a leading electronic-health-record platform, owning clinical-communications software used across thousands of care facilities.
  • Cut physician response times by 60%+ through a public–private telehealth partnership, supporting initiatives tied to $100M+ in downstream savings; collaborated with leading academic medical researchers on care-outcome trials.
  • Incubating agentic-LLM clinical search; past product roles at Coca-Cola and BlackBerry. CHIA & Microsoft Health Innovation award winner; 2010 Olympic torchbearer.
Healthcare productClinical AIAward-winningSFU

Ecosystem

Platforms & tools we know inside out.

We build secure, scalable software and work across the leading analytics, data-governance, and enterprise-platform landscape — bringing that ecosystem knowledge to every civic-tech engagement. Every tool below is in service of the same end: resident-facing outcomes you can measure.

Partner Ecosystem

Citrix

Secure, unified digital workspace technology for a work-anywhere world

citrix.com
TIBCO

Connected intelligence that solves enterprise-scale, complex challenges

tibco.com
ibi

Industry-specific analytics, data quality, preparation, and integration solutions

ibi.com
Spotfire

Powerful self-service analytics for data-intensive businesses

spotfire.com
Jaspersoft

Pixel-perfect reports and dashboards, embeddable and distributable at scale

jaspersoft.com
Arctera

Comprehensive compliance and governance, enabling clear, controlled regulatory navigation

arctera.com
Infoscale

Keeping critical workloads always-on across physical, virtual, cloud, and hybrid environments

infoscale.com
ON EBX

Manage, govern, and share your master data, reference data, and metadata within a single, unified platform

onebx.com
DataSynapse

Powering high-performance computing across the enterprise with a distributed platform built for your most intensive workloads

datasynapse.com
Tableau

Industry-leading visual analytics platform for interactive data exploration and shareable dashboards at any scale

tableau.com
Microsoft Power BI

Enterprise business intelligence with AI-powered insights, seamlessly integrated across the Microsoft ecosystem

powerbi.microsoft.com
Databricks

Unified analytics platform combining data engineering, collaborative notebooks, and ML workflows on the lakehouse architecture

databricks.com

Technical Expertise

Area 01

Analytics & BI

Statistical AnalysisOLSDelta MethodA/B TestingScenario ModellingKPI DevelopmentLookerTableauMicrosoft Power BI
Area 02

Data Modelling

SQLdbtDimensional Modelling (Kimball)Semantic ModellingBigQuerySnowflakeRedshiftSupabase
Area 03

Stakeholder

Business Case DevelopmentRequirements TranslationTechnical StorytellingCross-Functional CollaborationData Culture
Area 04

Programming

PythonpandasscipymatplotlibseabornScalaGitGitHub Actions CI/CDDocker
Area 05

Data Engineering

Apache SparkPySparkSpark SQLDelta LakeAirflowKafkaHivePipeline ArchitecturePerformance Tuning
Area 06

Cloud Platforms

Microsoft AzureGCPBigQueryDataflowCloud StorageAWS (CCP)Databricks
Area 07

Data Quality

Automated TestingData ValidationDocumentation StandardsCode ReviewsVersion ControlDRY Principles
Area 08

Infrastructure

Virtual MachinesKubernetes ClustersDockerManaged SQLPostgreSQLAzure Container AppsAzure App Services
Area 09

Security

Defender EndpointDefender IdentityDefender CloudMicrosoft PurviewMicrosoft SentinelSOC 2 Type 1 & 2ISO 27002OSFI B-10 & B-13Zero Trust ArchitectureIdentity & Access ManagementSIEMIncident Response

If a system you care about feels unfixable, that’s our favourite kind.

We’ll break it down — step by step, measured, evidence-first — into something you can act on.