Known internationally as "the father of telecommuting and telework," Jack Nilles was educated as a physicist, heading the preliminary design of several space vehicles and communications systems for the U.S. Air Force and NASA. During this period he was a consultant to President Kennedy's and Johnson's Science Advisory Council, the National Science Foundation and other federal departments. Later, he joined the University of Southern California as Director for Interdisciplinary Research and began his formal research on telecommuting and teleworking, terms he coined in 1973. As part of this research he worked with the Annenberg School of Communications to examine the transportation and effectiveness impacts of USC's Interactive Instructional TV System. With USC's Center for Futures Research he led a number of studies of the present and future impacts of information technology and created the standards by which major telecommuting projects are judged.
He founded the management consulting firm, JALA International, Inc., in 1980 and left USC in 1989 to devote full time to JALA. He has developed and/or evaluated telecommuting projects for a variety of Fortune 100 companies, the state governments of California, Arizona and Washington, the city of Los Angeles, and other government agencies in the U.S., Europe (including the European Commission), Southeast Asia, and South America. He is Past President of ITAC, the International Telework Association and is a member of the Management Group of the European Community Telework/Telematics Forum.
Nilles is the author of five books, including The Telecommunications-Transportation Tradeoff, the original book on telecommuting, as well as dozens of chapters of books, professional papers and articles. His 1994 book, Making Telecommuting Happen, is a complete how-to-do-it manual for telework program development and management. It is often called "the Bible of telecommuting." His latest book, titled Managing Telework, was published in the summer of 1998. It is an expansion and update of Making Telecommuting Happen and includes new chapters on marketing telework centers, organizational impacts, and the future of telework.
In 1993, he received the Environmental Pride Award for his contributions toward improving the air quality of Los Angeles, and, from 1994 to 1996, has received awards for his work in environmental sustainability from Renew America. In 1997 he received a special commendation from the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors for his work in improving the environment and easing traffic congestion in the region. In 1998 he was the first inductee of the Telework Hall of Fame, sponsored by the International Telework Association. He regularly appears on television and gives speeches and workshops on telework all over the world. He has just completed a review, for the European Commission, of the status and future of telework and e-commerce in the US and 10 other countries.