ENDPGM > 2009

Winning Play

How nuBridges CEO Paul Olson changed pro football

In sports, a free agent is a player who’s able to go where opportunity beckons, which seems to personify Paul L. H. Olson. On the gridiron or in the boardroom, Olson, CEO of nuBridges Inc., sees the possibilities and achieves them through innovation. One of Olson’s innovations, developed as a whim, has had a lasting impact on professional football.

Olson’s professional career began on the field. After graduating from Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn.—an elite liberal arts college not known for its sports—Olson was an undrafted free agent for the National Football League’s (NFL’s) New York Giants, Philadelphia Eagles and Chicago Bears, playing defensive tackle and end positions. Yet, Olson knew that his days as an NFL player were limited. “NFL stands for ‘not for long,’ ” he quips.

In 1974, Olson, who was spending the offseason teaching mathematics and coaching sports, left the Bears to honor his teaching contract. “I knew that football wasn’t going to be my career. I wanted to have an impact on people,” Olson says. After several years of teaching, Olson decided to redirect his life, earning an MBA (and eventually a doctorate in education management) and going to work for a large Midwestern homebuilder.

While in the home-construction industry, Olson computerized the process of home building to better coordinate construction schedules by developing a program on an IBM System/34, written in RPG II. Fascinated by the world of computing, Olson joined Tymshare in 1979 as an applications consultant, eventually rising to manage one of its Midwestern operations. As fate would have it, Olson’s football and computing careers were about to converge.

Next page: >>