Gaylan W. Nielson

Currently

Gaylan Nielson is the co-founder and CEO of The Work Itself Group. He frequently speaks to organizations and associations regarding Fake Work, The Work Itself, and many other organizational issues. He is a writer, consultant, teacher, and an executive coach.

Corporate Leader

Gaylan has vast experience in many different aspects of business leadership as a business owner, entrepreneur, manager, and as a senior consultant—such as: CEO of The Work Itself Group President of the Apollo Consulting Group, affiliated with the University of Phoenix Vice President at FranklinCovey and Director of Custom Solutions Partner, Founder of Ascent Group, LLC CEO, Founder of Ascent Global, LLC Director at Shipley Associates, Inc

Professional History

Gaylan has worked in the organizational environment for 23 years in a variety of roles—primarily as a consultant. He has also taught extensively, coached, and managed huge consulting and development projects. However, for the last 12 years he has worked primarily as an organizational consultant working on strategy, alignment, and execution; and on the implementation and communication of strategic plans. He has a reputation for working in demanding environments to create strategies, execute strategies, facilitate senior teams through complex problems, and help implement solutions. He has worked all over the world with many divisions of global organizations. The very diversity of his exposure to issues and problems has provided him with a rich and varied career. He was the lead on hundreds of projects where he and his team developed customized written products— strategic plans, business plans, large scale documents, training programs, books, presentations, brochures, policies, proposals, style guides, etc.

Clients Served

Gaylan has worked with hundreds of National, State, and County Government agencies, several non-profit organizations and many of the world’s major corporations around the world. Companies like Boeing, Chrysler, Price-Waterhouse-Cooper, General Electric, Toyota, Design Workshop, Shell Oil, and Chevron-Texaco, The U.S. Air Force, and the U.S. Navy are but a few of Gaylan’s' clients.

Personal

All that serious stuff was intermingled with other lives. Gaylan has written several plays, including one of the three plays chosen by the Sundance Playwriting Conference called “RFD.” With his Partner, the celebrated writer, David Kranes, he developed a number of radio plays and documentary programs for National Public Radio and won several prizes including a Smithsonian Prize for a piece called “I Found a Dinosaur,” which was part of the “Frontiers” series. He has written, edited, and published poetry and stories. Now, he has a passion for photography, which he says is just another way to tell a story. He is the father of three and grandfather to two girls. He has been married to his wife Elaine for over 30 years. He likes to say, “That says a ton about Elaine.” He lives in the Rocky Mountains, where he hikes, fishes, and plants a large vegetable garden.