Retiree Turned Education Activist
SPU ’s new trustee is on
a mission to improve learning
in American classrooms
ON A LATE SUMMER DAY, Donald Nielsen
awaited a phone call from Washington State
Governor Christine Gregoire. “I was talking
to her about changing how we recruit, train,
and place teachers,” says Nielsen, now in
his 15th year of retirement.
A new Seattle Pacific University trustee,
Nielsen isn’t taking a familiar approach to
“retirement” — if you think retirement should
include an RV and a winter home in Arizona.
Once the CEO of Virginia-based Hazleton
Corporation, one of the world’s largest biomedical
research companies, Nielsen retired
in 1992 and immediately called then U.S.
Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander.
“I said, ‘I’m the retired CEO of a NYSE
company, and I’ve decided to spend the
balance of my working life in education,’”
he explains. That began what he calls a
“two-year odyssey” that included meeting
with the chairs of both the U.S. House and
Senate Education Committees, as well as
governors, state legislators, and educators
from 19 states. Through it all, he asked:
“Can public education work?”
Born in Vancouver, British Columbia, to
Danish immigrants, Nielsen earned an
undergraduate degree at the University of
Washington and an M.B.A. from Harvard
Business School. By 1969, he had raised
$200,000 with business partner, Kirby
Cramer, to begin a company that became
Hazleton. When Nielsen retired 23 years
later, the corporation had grown to $165 mil-
Retiree Turned Education Activist
lion in sales and employed 2,500 people
across three continents.
“Before I even got involved with Hazleton,
I had picked two sectors of society that I
was interested in: One was the medical
sector and one was education,” Nielsen
explains. “They are the two systems in this
society that work least well.”
Once retired, he and his wife, Melissa, left
the East Coast to return to Seattle, where he
became a public education “activist.”
In 1993, Nielsen was elected to the Seattle
School Board. Shortly after, he and other
board members recruited retired Army Major
General John Stanford, whose out-of-the-box
ideas about improving education resonated
with Nielsen — and a huge following of Seattleites.
But only three years later, Stanford
died of leukemia.
During Nielsen’s second term, he served
as board president — and came under fire
when he recommended advertising in public
schools to raise money for underfunded
areas such as after-school programs, drama,
and music. “It was considered crass commercialism,”
he says. “But I have come to
the conclusion that we can build good public
schools with state and local funding — but
great public schools will require private giving,
and private giving can take many forms.”
As his term was ending, Nielsen again
began asking how America could upgrade
the quality of its education quickly and economically.
An award-winning Seattle teacher
had the answer, says Nielsen: “Her comment
was, ‘That’s easy. I’d film the greatest
teachers in the country, and I’d make those
teaching practices available to anybody in
the country over the Internet.’”
Now co-founder and chairman of Teach-First, a company that does just that, Nielsen
is seeing the organization’s “Professional
Learning Communities” strengthen public
education in 25 states. More districts and
states are added each year. Incidentally,
Sandi Everlove, the Seattle teacher who first
suggested filming teachers, earned her teaching
certificate from Seattle Pacific in 1985.
With Nielsen’s experience in the Seattle
education arena, it was inevitable that he and
SPU President Philip Eaton would connect.
The two met at Seattle business functions
and learned they shared a passion for excellence
in education. In early 2006, Eaton
asked Nielsen to join the SPU Board of Trustees.
“Our friendship has grown over a period
of time,” says Eaton. “He’s gotten to know
more about Seattle Pacific, and often he
would push me a little bit, asking what we
were doing to train teachers to be leaders.”
Nielsen says his work with SPU is an
extension of the promise he made years
ago to improve education in America —
at all levels.
“Don is going to be a terrific trustee,”
says Eaton. “I’m looking forward to leaning
on his insight.”
— By Hope McPherson (hmcpherson@spu.edu)
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