Coming Out of the Shadows

But according to an article Nelson has kept from the Star Tribune, written by columnist Jim Klobuchar, two miracles occurred that night. First, a woman in a nearby house—who later claimed she’d heard nothing, but awoke with a “feeling” that something terrible was happening—called 911 and summoned what turned out to be the only ambulance in the area that traveled with a pneumatic suit that could be used to compress Nelson’s body and keep blood flowing to vital areas: brain, lungs, and heart.

Second, during the few minutes when Nelson lay alone and bleeding in the dark on the road, his own parents drove by. They stopped to investigate what they thought was a random accident and found their son. And Glen Nelson—one of the few people in the state with the clout and connections to assemble a world-class team of surgeons in a matter of hours—ministered to his son.

Nelson had a badly severed artery; doctors worked through the night to fashion a new one from his veins. The operation was successful. But months later, Nelson was back in the hospital and the right lobe of his liver was removed.

“Unfortunately, I went through several times my blood weight that night [of the accident] and needed multiple transfusions and contracted hepatitis C,” Nelson says. “But I didn’t know it; there was no test back then.”

There was a brief period when Nelson struggled with alcoholism, though he is vague about the details. He realized he had a problem while he was young enough, he says, that the damage was minimal. And he got help.

Then, having survived a car accident, two major surgeries, and a bout with the bottle, Nelson headed off to Cornell University and earned a bachelor’s degree in hospitality in 1987. After graduation, he worked for Hyatt and Four Seasons hotels. His ambition was not to go into the family business. His grandfather changed his mind.

“It was only because I was so in awe of what that man did,” Nelson says. “I never intended to go to work for Carlson Companies. But my grandfather and I were very close, and after several years of his prodding me and talking about exponential job growth and philanthropy and family responsibility, I finally said yes.”

Curt Carlson proposed to create an executive position that would put his grandson in charge of increasing synergy across the company’s business units. But Nelson said no.

“I told him I would go in only at the level I would achieve on the outside,” he recalls. “So instead of starting at the VP level, I went to work as the food and beverage director for the Radisson in Alexandria, Virginia, in 1989.”

He moved around the country, working at different Carlson properties, then was named executive vice president of the Country Hospitality Worldwide business (Country Inns & Suites hotels and Country Kitchen restaurants) in 1993, and became its CEO later that same year. He had returned to the Twin Cities and completed an MBA at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management in the early 1990s. By 1997, he was president and CEO of Carlson Hospitality Worldwide.