Team

The people who will actually do the work

There is no bench of analysts behind this page. When you engage Walton Rose, one of these three is on your business — and between them they cover the operational, commercial and financial sides of a manufacturing P&L.

Charlie Dieruf

Logistics & supply chain

A business consultant focused on the part of the cost base that hides in plain sight: freight, carriers and the routing decisions nobody formally owns.

Charlie's work centres on supply chain optimisation, carrier negotiation and freight cost analysis. Transport spend is unusual in that it arrives as thousands of small invoices, none of which look worth challenging — which is precisely why rates drift and accessorial charges accumulate unexamined.

He works at shipment level: benchmarking what you pay against the market, testing whether mode and routing choices still make sense, and renegotiating from a position of evidence rather than relationship.

Focus: Supply chain optimisation, carrier negotiation, freight cost analysis
Typical work: Freight spend diagnostics, carrier RFPs and rate benchmarking, mode and routing review, accessorial audit

Chris Karwacki

Global sourcing & supply chain

Twenty years leading strategic sourcing, supply chain and operations for manufacturers — most of it accountable for spend rather than advising on it.

Chris has held the seat our clients usually occupy: Chief Procurement Officer at Inno-Pak, VP of Sourcing and Supply Chain at Novolex, Director of Global Sourcing at ACCO Brands, and Senior Manager of Raw Materials Sourcing at MeadWestvaco. That progression — category buyer to functional leader — means he is as comfortable modelling a should-cost as presenting a savings plan to a board.

His category depth is unusually specific: raw materials, paper products, aluminium foil, inks and coatings, adhesives, packaging, logistics across all modes, and IT equipment and services. He also leads our acquisition integration work, where sourcing synergies are typically the fastest to realise and the easiest to lose track of.

Focus: Category strategy, supplier negotiation, should-cost modelling, acquisition integration
Previously: CPO, Inno-Pak · VP Sourcing & Supply Chain, Novolex · Director Global Sourcing, ACCO Brands · Senior Manager Raw Materials Sourcing, MeadWestvaco
Education: B.S. Decision Science / Management Information Systems, George Mason University · Executive MBA, Virginia Commonwealth University
Executive education: Harvard Business School — Leadership Direct Certificate · Duke University, Fuqua School of Business — Leadership Program Certificate

Kevin Burnett

Finance, FP&A & controllership

A senior financial executive with more than twenty years across private equity portfolio companies, privately held firms and public companies.

Kevin brings the discipline that makes operational findings credible to the people who fund them. His background covers financial planning and analysis, controllership, ERP implementation and acquisition diligence — previously as Business Unit CFO and VP at Novolex, and earlier at Meritor. He is currently CFO and co-founder at Restorative Oxygen Care, LLC.

On turnaround engagements he owns the cash view. On growth and acquisition work he builds the model and stress-tests the assumptions, which in practice means being the person willing to say that a business case does not hold together.

Focus: Cash forecasting, FP&A, controllership, ERP implementation, acquisition diligence
Experience: Private equity portfolio companies, privately held firms and public companies
Previously: Business Unit CFO / VP, Novolex · Meritor
Also: CFO and co-founder, Restorative Oxygen Care, LLC
Education: B.S. Accountancy, Northern Kentucky University

How we are structured

Small by design, not by stage of growth

We are not a firm building towards a pyramid. The model works because senior people do the work directly, and that only holds if we take on a limited number of engagements at once.

In practice it means we will occasionally tell you we cannot start for a few weeks. We think that is a better answer than staffing your project with whoever happens to be available.

Working with a small firm

The person who scopes the work delivers it
No handover from a sales team to a delivery team
Direct access — you have their number
Fewer engagements running at once, deliberately
We decline work outside our competence

Speak to the person who would do the work

Tell us the situation and we will put you with whichever of the three is the right fit — or tell you honestly if it is none of us.

Start a conversation Email us