Jaap van Lakerveld was the director of PLATO from 1986 until 2023. He is a member of ATEE since 1986, an independent research and development centre established by the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. He is a researcher, and consultant in matters of (professional) learning and development in education and other organisations. His expertise include (1) evaluation research, (2) knowledge productivity and corporate curriculum , organisational learning and (his PhD thesis was in this area) and 3. In-service education of teachers. He takes part in several projects on heritage education, heritage interpretation and professional development of teachers and people working in the heritage sector. Throughout his career he led several European projects, or was involved as a partner. As a member of the RDC on Inservice learning and the development of practice, he took part for over thirty years in a series of consecutive projects on in service learning of teachers, teacher educators, in-service teacher educators, and facilitators of professional and organisational learning, in and beyond schools.

In recent years he became more and more involved in professional development in the field of crisis and disaster management, a field in which he led two state of the art projects, and International evaluation studies.