Nelson, Glenn
Glenn Nelson
Glenn Nelson is a journalist and wildlife photographer. After a career in sports journalism, Nelson works to increase diversity and representation in outdoor media. He founded The Trail Posse and is the Community Director of Birds Connect Seattle. , Nelson is married with two daughters and one dog. They live in Washington state. In his free time, he enjoys photography, baseball, jazz, museums, the arts, hiking, reading, and movies.
Glenn Nelson Portfolio. Award-winning nature photography. https://trailposse.com/portfolio/
Nelson, Glenn. November 21, 2019. How Seattle can slow gentrification- and why it must. Crosscut. Cascade PBS. https://crosscut.com/opinion/2019/11/how-seattle-can-slow-gentrification…
Nelson, Glenn. March 20, 2019. Birding is booming. So where are the Black birders? Yes! Magazine. https://www.yesmagazine.org/issue/dirt/2019/03/20/birding-where-are-blac…
Nelson, Glenn. June 27, 2016. What if I’m not white? High Country News. S https://www.hcn.org/issues/48.11/what-if-im-not-white.
Nelson, Glenn. July 10, 2015. Why are our parks so white? The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/12/opinion/sunday/diversify-our-national…
Glenn Nelson was born in Tokyo and raised in Seattle, Washington, since he was a few months old. His parents loved to fish and camp, and they spent most of their family vacations outdoors. The Seattle area has numerous opportunities for outdoor activities. Nelson’s father was the Scoutmaster at Boy Scouts Troop 14 in Seattle, and his troop was majority BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color). Several members of his troop are now leaders in the community today. He attended Cleveland High School and went to Seattle University for his undergraduate career, where he worked on the student newspaper and participated in student government. While in college, Nelson and a friend from his Boy Scout troop led outdoor trips for minority student groups. Nelson graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism and Political Science. Nelson then pursued graduate studies at Columbia University, completing a Master of Arts in American Government and Minority Politics.
Nelson began his journalism career as a sports reporter/columnist for the Seattle Times from 1981 to 1999. He was an NBA columnist and copy editor for the night sports desk. Nelson was the first sportswriter ever to win a national writing award for The Seattle Times and one of the first print journalists to leave for the internet. From 1999 to 2001, Nelson was the Managing Editor of the NBA for Rivals.com. From 2001 to 2007, Nelson was Editor-in-Chief for Scout.com, leading the organization’s content, development, and business decisions.
In 2005, he founded HoopGurlz.com, a girl’s and women’s basketball website. Founded to cover club teams, HoopGurlz became the only national media organization covering women’s basketball. Nelson made the organization independent and, within a few months, became a finalist for an Online Journalism Award, the highest award for digital media. In 2008, Nelson sold the site to ESPN and began working for ESPN managing HoopGurlz content and site.
Nelson left ESPN and HoopGurlz in 2012 to found The Trail Posse, a news outlet documenting race and the outdoors. At The Trail Posse, Nelson is a multimedia journalist and speaker on race and equity in the outdoors. The organization partners with local and national organizations, including High Country News, National Audubon Society, Outside Magazine, YES! Magazine, The Seattle Times, Crosscut, and many more. Nelson’s work at The Trail Posse has been recognized for winning second place in Best of the West, first place in columns for the Society of Professional Journalists, and second place for outstanding beat reporting in a small market from the Society of Environmental Journalists. In 2016, Nelson received two nominations for Crosscut.com’s Courage Award. In 2017, The Trail Posse was included in the “25 Best and Brightest in the Outdoor Industry” by Outdoor Retailer Daily.
From 2016 to 2017, Nelson was a Contributing Editor for High Country News, where he wrote and photographed content and helped the organization identify journalists and photographers of color. From 2018 to 2020, Nelson was a Race and Equity Columnist for Crosscut. Many of his pieces gained recognition, with three articles being among Crosscut’s most-read in 2019. In 2020, he wrote a column that won three first-place prizes from the Society of Professional Journalists. In 2019, Nelson received a Resilience Journalism Fellowship from Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at City University of New York
In 2019, Nelson joined The Maven Coalition as Vice President of the Maven Network. Maven is a technology and business platform that supports brand communication and diversity and inclusion efforts. In 2020, Nelson became Maven’s Senior Vice President of Network and Editorial Development and DEI. Nelson stayed with The Maven Coalition through 2020.
In 2022, Nelson joined Birds Connect Seattle as the Community Director. He leads diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts and develops communication strategies. He led an effort to rename the organization from the Seattle Audubon to Birds Connect Seattle. The renaming drew significant nationwide media attention from The Seattle Times, NPR, CNN, and the Washington Post.
Nelson is a founding member of the Next 100 Coalition, a national alliance of civil rights, environment, and community organizations of color working for access and inclusion in the management of public lands. He is also a founding steering committee member of the Outdoor CEO Diversity Pledge.
Nelson’s bird and wildlife photos won awards in international competitions, including being published in the 2023 Bird Photographer of the Year collection and Top 100 in the Audubon Photography Awards. His photograph has also been exhibited in the Smithsonian. The North American Natural Photographers Association, Share the View, and Bird Photographer of the Year have also recognized Nelson’s photography with awards. Nelson frequently speaks publicly and has presented at organizations, including the National Wilderness Stewardship Alliance, Olympic National Park, and Washington Trails Coalition.
Nelson contributes to several boards, including Audubon Washington, Seattle Jazz Fellowship, Spectrum Dance Theater, Confluence Project, and Friends of Waterfront Seattle. He is also on the Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage in the Pacific Northwest Task Force and the Japanese American Remembrance Trail Advisory Council.
Nelson names Doug Walker, the influential outdoorsman, one of his most significant mentors. The two knew each other only about a year before Walker passed away. Walker, a long-time advocate for diversity in the outdoors, supported Nelson’s newly launched project, The Trail Posse, and helped connect Nelson to other environmental and outdoor leaders.
While working at The Seattle Times, Nelson was a staff member of the Urban Newspaper Workshop for high school journalists. He also hired, mentored, and supervised Walker Fellows, young communications professionals of color exposed to the possibility of working in conservation, for the National Audubon Society. Outside formal programs, Nelson has mentored dozens of young people in journalism, conservation, and inclusion work.
Nelson believes that if your ideal professional situation does not seem to exist, create your own. If you believe in yourself and are clear about what you want, you will know what to do to make things happen for yourself. Nelson “remade myself and done things I love and believe in so many times in my professional life; it’s as if he haven’t really ‘worked’ a day” (2023).
About Glenn Nelson - The Trail Posse. (2022, June 11). The Trail Posse. https://trailposse.com/about-the-trail-posse/about-glenn-nelson/
Survey and interviews conducted by Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Sustainability Initiative staff. 2022-2023. Yale University-School of the Environment. New Haven, Connecticut.