Our Vision and Values
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WalnutWorks strives to improve everyone’s lives through better environments, whether those environments are the world around us, the technology we use, or the culture in our workplace.
WalnutWorks is positive. We believe in moving forward, learning from the past, identifying opportunities, making a difference.
WalnutWorks passionately believes that somewhere in a crowded technology field, amongst the hype and the solutions looking for problems, is something that can change people’s lives every day. And it may be simple.
WalnutWorks sees the landscape of public transport evolving, and believes the industry can harness evolving technology to create intuitive staff and customer experiences that aren’t constrained by what we’ve always done.
WalnutWorks firmly believes that every organisation employs amazing technical people and that loyalty is valuable. Sympathetic support and guidance can make technical teams into more than the sum of their parts.
WalnutWorks exists to help organisations make sense of the variety of technology options in a way that is specific to their goals and problems, their people and customers, and their existing solutions and means.
Who we are
Meet your Technology Matchmaker!
WalnutWorks was founded by Sue Walnut, a stalwart in transportation technology for over 25 years.
Sue’s career in Transport started with National Express Group, a global public transportation operator in a series of technical and analytical management roles, including Head of IT Service, UK & Germany, Head of Solutions, Bus & Corporate, Systems Architect (Enterprise architecture).
She has led the successful development and delivery of major programs of work, including replacement Electronic Ticketing systems and core IT projects, like the upgrade and replacement of a national WAN. Sue is also an SME in many transport technology standards, such as ITSO, cEMV, SIRI, and GTFS.
After more than 20 years with National Express, Sue moved to Vix Technology in the role of Product Director for the set of products (ticketing for bus and Rail, and Real-time information and fleet management for bus) engineered in the UK. In her 4 years in the role, Sue was accountable for product strategy and delivering a significant new product into production every year, including disruptive digital-first rail gates, and a new ITS RTPI and Fleet Management platform. The new products and product features that Sue introduced were behind year-on-year increases in sales in the UK.
In both organisations, Sue turned around underperforming technical teams, empirically improving staff engagement and reducing churn whilst improving throughput and quality, even under challenging circumstances.
Crucially, Sue has centred her ticketing technology insights on the needs and outcomes of people from every touch point of public transportation, from users to frontline staff to board directors and politicians. This has led to a truly holistic approach to understanding technology for public transportation, far from just taking payment for travel, and Sue uses that vantage point to fundamentally re-evaluate traditional approaches to everything the transport industry thinks it wants from technology. Taking a market- and product-led approach to understanding the industry’s problems means that Sue is not afraid to go back to basics and rattle the cages of established thinking.
WalnutWorks Ltd represents Sue’s driving belief that technology should serve people. It should make it faster and easier to achieve the outcomes we actually need, and if it can do that in a way that leaves a positive experience, even better.