John Lawton’s professional profile

A learning professional to the core, John Lawton has worked in training and e-learning for over twenty years.

Experience beyond e-learning

John began his career in learning as a lecturer at Dacorum College in Hemel Hempstead. From there, he moved to P&P Training, which was later acquired by one of the UK's leading training companies, QA. While at P&P Training/QA, John was a successful training project manager, responsible for creating and managing large-scale training programmes for some of the UK's best-known companies, including the ACCA, BBC, BT, Hughes Christensen, IBM Lucent, Lotus, Oracle, Rank, Royal SunAlliance, Willis Corroon and Zeneca.

John has over twenty years' experience in training project management, over a decade's experience developing bespoke classroom-based training and nearly fifteen years' experience in e-learning development.

Establishing Harlequin Training Solutions to focus on e-learning

John established his own business, Harlequin Training Solutions, in 1996, to focus on e-learning and other forms of self-paced training. With a strong desire to remain as a practitioner of e-learning, John works independently, using partners where required for specialist development such as video production.

Since Harlequin was founded, John has - either directly or with training partners - provided e-learning to some of the world's leading companies.

A hands-on, practical approach to e-learning

It's John's personal belief that too much e-learning is described in inflated terms - that, to be successful, e-learning should be direct, accessible and fun. This comes through clearly when John works with clients, helping to plan e-learning programmes in a way that removes the mystique and hype - creating courses that, quite simply, get the job done.

Outside Harlequin

Based in Wiltshire, England, John loves village life and is an active participant in the local community - he's spent four years as a town councillor of Malmesbury, and has served a term as mayor, helping to bring change to the town, including the modernisation of the town's superb town hall. For eight years, John was secretary of the town's two-week carnival. John is married, loves to travel and likes nothing better than a good film, either at home or the cinema.