Old Fashioned Innovation, Future-Driven Technology

Nate Walkingshaw is a passionate inventor and serial entrepreneur. Driven by a love of humanity and an obsession with solving systemic problems, Nate began his career as an EMT. While responding to life-threatening emergencies, he recognized the need for a safer, faster patient transport system.

Paramed, Nate’s first startup, was born in response to that need and quickly revolutionized patient transport by designing products that are now used by 70% of the world’s hospitals. Paramed was acquired by Stryker Medical in 2009 where Nate led global research and development within the emergency services division.

Known for his Directed Discovery methodology, Nate has long been a leader in human-centric product design. Humanity lies at the center of everything Nate does and he is intensely focused on the problems that inhibit progress, using technology as a catalyst to scale solutions.

He has successfully built a number of hardware and software companies, including Brightface which was later acquired by Strava Corporation, the leading fitness application for endurance athletes in the world. Nate then moved to Tanner Labs where he served as Chief of Research and built an innovation and R&D lab, transforming the company’s fundamental approach to product creation and development.

Nate served as Chief Experience Officer of Pluralsight for six years where he rebuilt the entire platform and learning experience from the ground up. He revolutionized the way Pluralsight’s team and author network engaged with the learner and developed industry-leading experiences that improved technologists’ learning outcomes, achieved digital transformation for entire companies and created pathways to employment for vulnerable individuals.

His leadership and commitment to the company’s mission to democratize technology skills contributed to Pluralsight’s successful IPO in May 2018. 

Today, Nate’s insatiable curiosity, love of farming, and penchant for solving intractable problems have brought Torus to life. As CEO and Founder of Torus, Nate envisions a world without energy poverty and one powered, sustainably, by Mother Nature. Torus is a renewable energy generation and storage company that grew out of Nate’s own family tree farm. As he cultivated the farm and nurtured the trees on it, he embraced the duality of growing trees in the high desert and set out to harness renewable power to create energy independence on the farm. His experiments led to a realization that the ability to monitor and manage power resulted in dramatic behavior change.

Torus combines innovative renewable energy solutions with information about consumption to provide agency for community members and businesses as they endeavor to live and operate more sustainably. Torus is Nate’s life work and deepest passion. It is an expression of his love of humanity, his care for the planet, and his dedication to providing people with products and services that address their most acute needs. 

“Torus’ mission is to empower individuals and communities to become their own renewable utility provider. And our vision is to decarbonize homes by 60–80% within the first three years of installation. We believe that the future of energy storage and management is Torus.”

Nate is the author of the best-selling books “Product Leadership: How Top Product Managers Launch Awesome Products and Build Successful Teams” and “Chasing Confidence: Transforming Ideas into Impact,” which have sold over 40,000 copies worldwide in more than 16 languages. Nate can frequently be found sharing his craft from the stage. He has served on numerous boards and advises investors and companies on how to discover and deeply understand customers’ needs.

Among the many state and national awards Nate has received for his leadership, his most prized is Innovator of the Year by Great Places to Work. The award is peer voted and a celebration of a leader’s outstanding contributions to their company's business that help it fully live its values in service to customers, employees, and stakeholders.