Participation in this process is appreciated, as the International Board represents the ideas and priorities that matter most to ISPE and its global community, including Affiliates, Chapters, committees, and professional networks.
Meet Jim Grunwald
Jim Grunwald is Senior Vice President of US Business Development at Arcadis, bringing more than 30 years of experience in the AEC industry supporting life sciences and advanced technology clients. He has led strategic capital projects and business development efforts across planning, risk assessment, site selection, and operational readiness, and previously held leadership roles with engineering and CQV service providers. Jim has extensive experience guiding complex project initiatives for major global clients and is known for his expertise in strategic planning and development tailored to highly regulated industries. He is an active member of ISPE, including past leadership within the Boston Chapter and ongoing engagement at the Society level.
Read Jim’s Q&A Responses
1. Please briefly share the vision you see for ISPE's future, especially as it relates to our current strategic vision, pillars, and core values.
Where are we going? What does the future look like? And why do we do this? I think that the nice thing about our vison is, it’s very clear. It’s quite eloquently stated that it’s about enhancing the quality of human life.
If you think of the pillars of ISPE, we’ve been working on those for the past 6-8 months as a Board, and we wrestled with, well what are they, and what’s most significant about them. And certainly, this community of knowledge is incredibly powerful if you think about the expertise we have with all these folks that have dedicated their careers the better part of their lives to enhancing the quality of human life—whether it’s drug discovery, or maybe you’re in the trades and you’re a welder but that incredibly expensive sloped piece of pipe there is ultimately going to carry the lifeblood for a patient. Maybe it’s just high purity water, but it means something. It’s great to work in that environment, and our pillars really support the fact that, through knowledge-sharing and our community, all that innovation that goes on in industry can be shared. That’s a big part of ISPE.
2. Please provide a brief description of your ISPE volunteer career.
What does my volunteer career look like? I suppose, in a word, it would be, “long.” Twenty-five years ago, I got involved in Boston, Massachusetts, which is my home Chapter. It started there and then I was on the [Chapter] Board for 13 years and ran all the committees and ultimately, I became an officer, and low and behold, finished that up as President. I went on to run the charity we have in Boston; it’s called the Education Scholarship Fund, a 501c3. I founded that with a number of our [Chapter] Board members, and it’s still going on today. We’ve awarded nearly $400,000 to a number of really great and worthy students. At about the same time, at the tail end of Boston, I started to get involved with the Society: running the Facility of the Year Awards committee, helping produce some of the conferences, doing presentations of my own, as well as panel discussions, and in general, volunteering wherever and whenever I felt so moved, which is quite often.
3. Please provide a brief description of your industry experience.
I started in industry, in the automation field. The first biotech job I did was in Cambridge, Massachusetts. We were the automation contractor, and I got a real taste of the intricacies and the nuances of biotech automation. I knew that there was something different about this industry, and it really attracted me.
Over the years, I’ve had the opportunity to have an incredible responsibilities, sometimes with bigger companies, some smaller. Ultimately, I joined DTS Group when they came to the US as a shareholder [and a] Board member; stayed there and helped them grow the company from about 30 people to 1,000 in about 8 short years; at which time, in 2022, we decided to be acquired by Arcadis, where I now work in a very similar role, but now it’s a company with a global footprint, so we’re at 36,000 people, and I’m bringing my skillset to clients across the US and other regions in very much the same way as I did with that first project way back at Cambridge.
Election Information
Members in good standing as of Monday, 1 June 2026 should have received an electronic ballot via email from Intelliscan, Inc., ISPE's independent election partner. All candidate materials and ballot instructions should be reviewed carefully prior to submission, as votes cannot be changed or recast once submitted.
Voting may also be completed by logging into the ISPE Elections Homepage using the email associated with the member’s ISPE account and the ISPE Member ID number.
Members who did not receive a ballot may contact ISPE regarding membership status:
The election closes at 23:59 ET on Friday, 24 July. All eligible members are encouraged to participate.
View this year’s election candidates.
