Our Story
Bell-Wylie Consulting was founded by Managing Director, Alistair Bell Wylie, following a career spanning almost 30 years across Scottish and international education settings. We are a consulting company bringing consultancy services to organisations and businesses, and credential evaluation services to institutions and individuals.
We make it our mission to help our clients harness and enable the true power of education by sharing our experience and helping to unlock potential. We believe collaboration is key: we work with our clients to understand their needs and deliver solutions using a range of partners and strong experience. We are confident this delivers the best results and keeps the focus on the end goal.
Our team brings a wide range of experience from across the globe with specific expertise in curriculum and qualification development, assessment development, national frameworks, policy and standards development, credential evaluation, professional development, and corporate training.
Whether you’re an organisation seeking assistance with a specific task or an on-going project collaboration or simply looking to build capacity in an existing area, speak with us and let’s learn how we can work together.
Our People
Alistair Bell Wylie, Managing Director
Alistair originally trained as a teacher of business education and economics, qualifying with a double distinction (PGCE) from the renowned Jordanhill College, Glasgow in 1995. He also holds a BA(Hons) in Business Law from Strathclyde Business School and an MEd in Technology Enhanced Learning from the University of Stirling.
He gained frontline experience as a secondary school teacher as well as many years working in the further education sector in Scotland. During this time he was a significant contributor to several national initiatives, including COLEG and HSDU.
For over 15 years, he worked in leadership roles in national education and assessment; firstly as a national manager for the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) and latterly as Head of Service (Qualifications) managing a large team. His career has seen him involved in education, qualifications, national frameworks and assessment activities across the UK and also internationally, including periods of work in the USA, Canada, Europe and the Middle East.
He has worked at the forefront of most of the significant curriculum and assessment changes over the past 15 years in Scottish schools and vocational education including the original development of the Curriculum for Excellence, its associated qualifications and assessments and their revisions. More recently, he has spent time in the United Arab Emirates working for the Federal Government with a focus on regulation, policy, vocational education development and apprenticeships.
He is a published author having been retained by Hodder Gibson Education for 20 years, during which time he authored and published more than 15 educational textbooks.
Alistair has current affiliations with several organisations including: long-standing member of the TAICEP Conference Planning Committee, member of the TAICEP Outreach and Engagement Committee (www.taicep.org), Chair of the Board of Directors and Trustees for the Scottish Schools Education Resource Centre (www.sserc.org.uk), Vice-Chair of the Board of Directors for greenspace scotland (www.greenspacescotland.org.uk) and an Independent Board Member on the Board of Management of UHI Perth (www.perth.uhi.ac.uk).
Karin Christoph Brown
Associate
Karin is a successful businessperson in her own right having set up her company, One Earth International Credential Evaluations, in 2010. Karin has over 20 years of experience in credential evaluation and world education. We are proud to partner with Karin giving additional support and experience to our own Credential Evaluation services.
Julie Cavanagh
Associate
Julie has over 20 years of experience in UK education systems and has specialised in partnerships, communication, research, training and government policy. She has a particular interest in the marketing of and engagement with National Qualification Frameworks as well as reviewing their impact and is passionate about skills recognition and developing individual learning pathways.
Tim Dawkins
Associate
Tim has over 20 years of experience in the vocational qualifications and skills sector working in marketing, business development and new market entry with major awarding organisations. He has experience in market lead qualification development, and has worked in Southeast Asia, the Middle East and across Europe on technical and vocational education solutions.
Fiona Dewar
Senior Associate
Fiona is an experienced business advisor, coach and leadership trainer. With a senior leadership career spanning over 30 years, she provides bespoke training solutions to businesses as well as support to organisations and institutions to develop and deliver training materials. We are proud to partner with Fiona, who shares her expertise with us and our clients.
Tom Kelly
Senior Associate
Tom’s experience and qualifications are in the field of education and educational development. This has been gathered over a distinguished career spanning 40+ years in leading educational change at school, national and international levels in the UK and many other countries. We are proud to draw on Tom’s extensive knowledge to support the business and our clients.
Abdulrahman Lababidi
Associate
Abdulrahman is a mechanical engineer with 7 years of experience in teaching, training, quality assurance, and curriculum and assessment development. Recently, he helped shape the vocational curriculum for mechanical engineering in the UAE's governmental high schools and is fluent in both written and oral Arabic and English. We welcome his experience in supporting our clients in the Middle East.
Rebecca M. Murphy, EdD
Associate
Rebecca has over 30 years of personal and professional experience with comparative international education credentials and systems. She has particular interest in research, adult learning, and creating bridges between culture and curriculum. Rebecca brings a wide range of experience to the business and we are excited to partner with her to support our clients.
Aileen Ponton
Senior Associate
Aileen has over 40 years of experience in education and training in both the public and third sectors. During this time, Aileen has gained extensive experience at all levels in developing and quality assuring qualifications, and qualification frameworks. We are proud to call on Aileen’s vast experience to help support our projects and clients.