Wilbur G. Williams

Wilbur Williams has over 22yrs of diverse engineering, and technical operations experience in Development, Clinical, and Commercial manufacturing in the pharmaceutical, biotech, and Cell & Gene Therapy space. Born and raised in Puerto Rico, Wilbur’s experience includes support of business-critical capital investments and new facility startups for companies such as Lilly del Caribe, Amgen, AstraZeneca, and Kite. After relocating to Maryland in 2008, Wilbur became the Global Engineering CQV Lead for the construction and startup of AstraZeneca’s first and award-winning bulk biologics facility in Frederick, Maryland. Soon after, Wilbur held several positions with increasing responsibility within AstraZeneca Facilities and Operations group in Gaithersburg, later returning to AZ’s Global Engineering organization to lead the CQV function for the Americas Region. In 2018 Wilbur joined Kite’s Global Quality Engineering organization where he was responsible for the Technical Quality oversight for the design, startup, and licensing of Kite’s global manufacturing network. He later transferred to lead the Quality Engineering organization for their most advanced Clinical and Commercial manufacturing facility located in Urbana, Maryland. Here he was responsible for the sites Quality Risk Management process, as well as technical quality oversight of new technology introduction, tech transfers, capacity expansions, process improvements, and daily clinical & commercial operations. In 2024, Wilbur returned to AstraZeneca to lead the Quality function for the first Commercial Cell Therapy manufacturing facility currently under construction in Rockville, Maryland.