John Eric Nelson – 50th Reunion Essay

John Eric Nelson

2031 Turtle Pond Drive

Reston, VA 20191

john.nelson.wsww@gmail.com

(703) 801-5287

Spouse(s): Kimberly Ballard Nelson, (1973)

Child(ren): Bergen Ballard Nelson, 1976; Frederick Ballard Nelson, 1980

Grandchild(ren): Harper Tamish Nelson Girardet, 2011, Sawyer Kenneth Nelson Girardet, 2013, Miles Alexander John Nelson, 2014

Education: University of Michigan, MA, 1974

Career: Wall Street Without Walls (Washington, DC and NYC 15), Co-director, providing volunteer technical assistance from finance professionals to non-profits and municipalities for community economic development; Trust for Public Land (San Francisco,4), Director of Training and Special Programs, land trusts and urban projects; Independent Consultant (Washington, DC, 20) community development, environmental policy, and private-public sector partnerships; Purpose Prize Fellow 2009.

Avocations: Board member for policy advocacy, social entrepreneurship and community-based organizations; Buddhist Lay Ordination/member of the San Francisco Zen Center; collaborative fun with family and friends; early bird tennis and twilight golf.

College: Jonathan Edwards

I was the first from my Northern Virginia high school to go to Yale, golden boy at the time: quarterback, student body president, civil rights advocate, highest ranking academic boy, serious, abstemious, virgin. My dad somehow knew my admission folder was marked “Football Not Necessary” though I expected to play. Yale had its eye on another freshman quarterback with initials “BD” and I agreed “not necessary”, wisely deciding to play intercollege for the JE Spiders. I became an “athletic aid” for four years, getting paid year-round for playing tackle and touch, basketball, baseball, and softball. Great job that taught me you could find joy in one’s work and exercise every day.

Having been part of the civil rights movement in one of the South’s first integrated schools, I arrived on campus fully committed to racial justice. I immediately joined Dwight Hall and was a kind of “big brother” mentor for young boys in the largely African American Hill District. The New Haven Y eventually employed me to supervise the program and I remained involved in community development the rest of my life.

I also arrived in ’65 vehemently opposed to US policy in Vietnam and argued for years with my Army reserve colonel father and eventual father-in-law Navy reserve captain and many of my high school and college friends. I suppose the war was the pivotal factor in my pretty much non-existent career decision making and the basic undermining of my being a golden boy after all.

Through a high school classmate of my wife, Kim Ballard Nelson, we really met at Yale sophomore year while she was singing with the Wellesley Widows and later married in ’73. I also discovered Buddhism at Yale starting a fifty-year habit of daily meditation. I later wrote my master’s thesis at Michigan, “The Institutional History of Zen in America,” decided not to be an academic, and enthusiastically moved with my new bride to the San Francisco Zen Center. Shockingly, I found out I needed an actual job, and was fortunate through Zen Center connections to begin work with the very young Trust for Public Land. I developed nationwide training, land trust, and urban program activities there and have continued to work on environmental policy and urban development programs ever since.

Kim and I were active members of Zen Center for a decade, including two years residing at Tassajara monastery with our two-year-old daughter, Bergen. Very remote location inland from Big Sur, no electricity, following the 1200-year-old schedule of Chinese Zen: early morning meditation, work, study, meals in the zendo, hot spring, evening meditation, very solid 6 hours of sleep, repeat. I was in great shape there and somehow our two-year-old was too… becoming eventually a professor of medicine, and turning down Yale four times!

I have worked since 1985 in Washington, DC as an independent consultant in policies, finance, and projects related to community development and the environment. Since 2003 my primary focus has been as co-director of Wall Street Without Walls, connecting volunteer expertise and financial innovation at scale to economic development and the environment.

Son Eric lives in Manhattan with his fabulous Dutch wife and their three-year-old son. Daughter Bergen and her talented British husband live in Richmond with their two boys…. All three grandsons have dual citizenship! Kim and I remain in our home for the last 33 years, Reston, Virginia, conveniently an NORC (naturally occurring retirement community).