Mr. Vesper worked eleven years at Eli Lilly and Company, Indianapolis, Indiana. His first assignment was as corporate industrial hygienist, followed by three years in Corporate Quality Assurance. There, he was responsible for issues concerning the manufacture and testing of parenteral products made at Lilly facilities and third-parties worldwide. His last assignment was as Project Leader of GMP (Good Manufacturing Practice) Education and Instruction, establishing the department and its mission.
Since 1991, Mr. Vesper has been creating innovative instructional products for the pharmaceutical and health-care industries using video and computer technologies as more effective and efficient delivery media. Working as consultants with a wide variety of clients, his firm creates integrated curricula for personnel and customized training courses targeted to particular needs. He presents papers and workshops at various international technical and professional meetings, including those of the ISPE, GMP TEA, PDA, Pharmaceutical Sciences Group, PharmTech, and the International Pharmacy Congress. He has presented papers and workshops presented at PDA, PharmTech Puerto Rico, and WORLDPHARM conferences, as well as conducted courses at the Canadian PSG meetings in Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal. In 1999 he joined the faculty of the PDA Training and Research Institute, teaching at a variety of locations in North American and Europe. In 2001, he was awarded the PDA’s Agallaco Award for Excellence in Training. Mr. Vesper helped design unique web-based training courses with LearnWright and served as executive producer of pharma courses until 2006.
As an author, Mr. Vesper has written five books. Three are published by Interpharm (now CRC) Press: Training for the Healthcare Manufacturing Industries (1993), GMP and Quality Auditing—Clear and Simple (1997), and Documentation Systems—Clear and Simple (1997). He has also contributed four chapters to Automation and Validation of Information in Pharmaceutical Processing published in 1998 by Marcel Dekker. A fourth book, GMP in Practice, is now co-published by PDA and DavisHorwood Publications. (A new edition is to be published in 2011.) A series of articles on training and performance topics began appearing in the November 2000 issue of BioPharm. Risk Assessment and Risk Management for the Pharmaceutical Industry was published by PDA and Davis-Horwood International in 2006. He was also the principle writer on a training guideline for the World Health Organization (WHO) that was published in 2007. He continues to work with the WHO as a consultant and advisor to WHO’s Vaccine Quality/Global Learning Opportunities.
In addition to traveling extensively and working on-site in Turkey, Singapore, Latin America, India, France, the Netherlands, England, Ireland, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and Puerto Rico, Mr. Vesper has been on the faculty of Indiana University, teaching courses in Industrial Hygiene and guest lecturing at other universities including the University of Rochester. He has appeared on stage in the Metropolitan Opera’s production of Aida at New York’s Lincoln Center in a supernumerary role.
Mr. Vesper earned a B.S. in Biology from Wheaton (Illinois) College and a Masters of Public Health from the University of Michigan School of Public Health in Ann Arbor. In 2010 he became a candidate for a PhD in Education from Murdoch University in Perth, Western Australia. His research, conducted as part of a larger project with the WHO is entitled: Developing Expertise of those Handling Temperature-Sensitive Pharmaceutical Products Using E-Learning: A Design Research Study.
He is a member of ASTD, PDA, ISPE, and the SRA. Mr. Vesper also serves on several advisory boards.
James L. Vesper
LearningPlus, Inc.
1140 Highland Avenue
Rochester, NY 14620 USA
Phone: +1 (585) 442.0170
Website: www.learningplus.com
September 2011