Jean Nelson was a versatile pioneer among women researchers, who altered her own career as SRI’s and clients’ needs changed. A graduate of Vassar near the end of World War II, she entered the U. S. Foreign Service, serving among other places in Rumania.
Returning to the United States about 1959, Jean joined SRI’s Naval Warfare Research Center as a historian and specialist on Eastern Europe. Based on her background in the Pacific Northwest, she also participated in SRI studies of economic development prospects for certain US Indian tribes.
When NWRC’s research needs changed, Jean moved over to the Long Range Planning Service (LRPS), as program manager on the effects of social changes on business. She was the first woman at that level in SRI’s Economics and Management group. Her 1966 pioneering study on the state of the art in forecasting social change was a “best seller.”
Over the protest of some senior executives, she became the first woman to present a paper at SRI’s annual LRPS Client Conference and was voted best speaker of that meeting. Two years later, she became research director of LRPS (later the Business Intelligence Program).
Not only was she responsible for research programming and quality control, she cajoled many SRI technical experts into writing business-oriented reports and mentored many younger staff members in the rigors of SRI research and report-writing standards.