An attorney by training who became an information industry innovator and a venture capital consultant to numerous businesses, Wilson was also an internationalist and a conservationist.
Wilson attended public high school in Scarsdale, New York, through ninth grade, and graduated from Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, in 1941.
He took command of a medium-size landing craft in San Diego and sailed it through the Panama Canal and home to Charleston, South Carolina.
He joined the law firm of Sullivan and Cromwell in New York City in November 1948, and resigned in March 1949 to become an organizer for the United World Federalists (UWF).
)[citation needed] Wilson reentered the legal profession in 1955, joining the law firm of Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison in Manhattan.
At Cousin's urging, Wilson and his friend William Josephson became the junior attorneys on a landmark case, Reynolds v. United States involving the skipper of a boat arrested for sailing into a Pacific nuclear test area.
Wilson met Mary Louise Swan Baron (known as Peter) in 1951 when she responded to a classified ad for a secretary in the Federalist office.
They met again in the Connecticut offices of Bice Clemow, the editor of the West Hartford News Archived 2018-01-25 at the Wayback Machine, for whom Peter Baron was working.
He recounted many times that he advised the Port of New York to introduce standardized shipping containers slowly since it would result in a major shift in labor.
Founded by William Gorog [1] and his partner, Lysle Cahill, Data Central had received Air Force Funding to develop a range of innovations in equipment, cameras, printers, and software.
This included an Information Systems Division that had a promising on-line database software technology made possible by the power of the new IBM 360 computers.
A transcript of the meeting was made, and the original business plan still exists—entitled " A Major Opportunity for Mead to enter the field of information services through automated legal research—Business Venture Analysis."
Jerome Rubin also left ADL at this time and became the second president of MDC after Wilson moved to the venture's board as Vice Chairman.
[citation needed] His insider's knowledge of the sociology and particularly the hierarchy of law firms was fundamental to the business plan he and his team worked out.
It is clear from the 1970 presentation[citation needed] that Wilson understood how fundamentally this innovation would change the practice of the law, a vision that was proved out.
Wilson later advised many publishers about the early development of database businesses, and worked with many startups such as Polygon, Oxford Analytica, Toxicheck, and ConQuest Software (later Excaliber) where he was Vice-Chairman.
[citation needed] Later, Wilson gave Lessac a desk, typewriter and secretary to write The Use and Training of the Human Voice,[1] now in its third edition.
As chairman of the venture, Wilson worked with the CIO, his longtime associate, Gary A. Marple, to obtain several patents in the two years before his death at the age of 82.
In 1964, Don Wilson was appointed by President Lyndon Johnson as the second Peace Corps director for Ethiopia, the third largest country program at the time.
Drawing on his international relations background and his war experience, he managed up to 700 volunteers at one time in the country, and he and his wife traveled throughout the mountainous region by Land Rover and Cessna plane and through East Africa on holidays with his family.
All of them went on to distinguish themselves as leaders on key issues of the times such as nuclear disarmament, world peace, support for the U.N., population control, and civil and human rights.
As Chair of the World Federalists from 1970 - 1977, he worked with Margaret Mead, Father Theodore Hesburgh, Robert McNamara, Luther Evans and James Grant to found New Directions, an ambitious attempt to create a citizen's lobby on international issues.
The organization was credited with helping to win passage of the Panama Canal Treaty, but ultimately did not obtain the necessary financial support for long term viability.