Executive Bio
Eric Esperne, JD, CPCM
President and Principal Consultant
Eric worked for 15 years as an in-house attorney for MCI WorldCom and Cable & Wireless, two multi-national telecom's, and for several small Government and commercial contractors in the Washington, DC, area, prior to founding James River Consulting.
At MCI WorldCom, Eric became the lead staff attorney supporting corporate procurement of software and IT services. Eric also served as the lead attorney in negotiating and managing all corporate Y2K remediation contracts. Other projects at MCIW included supporting the re-launch of a retail dial up Internet service to compete with AOL and advising the company on outsourcing all IT operations to EDS. 
While at MCI, Eric negotiated more than one hundred license agreements ranging from tens of thousands to tens of millions of dollars.
As a senior staff attorney at Cable & Wireless, Eric worked extensively with product development teams on standard paper and online contracts for a wide array of network and Web hosting services sold both in the US and in Europe. After successful launch of the products, Eric supported all telecommunications and computer systems procurement in the US. Other general duties at C&W included advising C&W's UK parent company on US Internet regulatory policy and serving as lead senior staff attorney in support of the company's US fiber back bone.
In the Government contracting arena, Eric served as Director of Contracts and General Counsel, respectively, for MSI (now Lason) and Catapult Technology, both IT services providers doing business with the Federal government as prime contractors and as subcontractors to larger companies; MSI also conducted substantial business with State and Local governments. In the mid 1990's, also worked as a senior consultant to Federal government agencies on IT acquisition protests and overall acquisition management under a contract with GSA FEDSIM, during which time Eric was involved with the very first Federal IT services contract to employ a formal performance measurement program.
At both Lason and Catapult, Eric wrote and updated the employee manuals, drafted independent contractor agreements, and otherwise advised the companies on human resources matters. Catapult was a very early adopter of "co-employment," now called professional employment organizations (PEOs). Because Catapult was the co-employment company's largest customer, Eric advised both companies on co-employment issues including rewriting the co-employment agreement itself.
Eric holds a BA in political science from Northwestern University, a JD from American University, a Certified Professional Contract Manager (CPCM) certification, and course work in the Georgetown University LLM program and towards an MS in Technical and Science Communication at Drexel University.
Eric is a member of the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council, the International Association for Commercial and Contract Management (IACCM), the Institute for Supply Management (ISM), and the National Contract Management Association (NCMA).
Eric is licensed to practice law in the Commonwealth of Virginia.