Paul W. Nelson

Hall of Fame Inductee 1995

back to Hall of Fame

Paul Nelson has been an outstanding innovator in both the airline and telecommunications industries, using information technology to create new approaches to business and achieve new levels of productivity.

Nelson has been Chief Information Officer and Vice President of Information Technology for Rogers Cantel Inc. of Toronto since 1994. He led the development and implementation of the Automated Cellware Entry system. That system, which handles daily change requests regarding customer service and frequent sales promotions, has yielded significant productivity improvements, cost savings and revenue increases.

Nelson came to Rogers Cantel after spending more than six years as President and Chief Executive Officer of The Gemini Group, a joint venture between Air Canada and Canadian Airlines that transformed the way airlines serve the public. Nelson led Gemini's successful effort to combine the two airlines' reservation and inventory control systems with the Apollo computerized reservation system. This became Canada's largest private data network. Earlier, as Vice President Information Systems at Canadian Airlines, Nelson was responsible for the integration of two information systems created from the merger of Canadian Pacific Airlines and Pacific Western Airlines.

Nelson was born in Oil City, Pa., in 1941 and received a bachelor of arts from St. Joseph's College in Indiana. A Canadian citizen since 1990, he has donated considerable time to industry organizations and as a lecturer at post-secondary institutions. He is a former Vice-Chairman of the Canadian Business Telecommunications Alliance. Between 1989 and 1992, Nelson was Chairman of the Communications Competition Coalition and was instrumental in obtaining lower costs for telecommunications in Canada.