Katrina Bell
Associate Consultant
k.bell@reading.ac.uk
Katrina brings expertise to SUMS Consulting, obtained through managing complex operational admissions teams at global institutions and interim management roles in higher education.
She describes herself as an advocate of continuous improvement, leading and motivating people, applying practical solutions, and delivering on key strategic business goals that enhance and improve operational delivery.
She has worked in the Higher Education sector for over 20 years at various levels, bringing experience from working at a variety of institutions. Katrina transitioned into interim management work in 2020, her most recent role being at the University of Hull as Interim Senior Associate-Student Experience, in Student Services and Admissions. Assigned to mini projects where brief objectives were set with high importance, she worked autonomously with a can-do attitude, role modelling, delivering coaching and mentoring to staff to scope, evaluate, and build positive nurturing relationships. Katrina reviewed the team delivery plans, processes, established roles, remits, structure and workloads, as well as identifying issues and challenges the teams experienced with delivery of service. She provided expert guidance and recommendations to senior leaders for successful benefits and implementation.
Katrina is a natural problem solver and has always prided herself on building excellent collaborative working relationships with colleagues and key stakeholders. She is able to understand the client’s needs and the goals they want to achieve from the assignment and engages with all internal and external stakeholders at all levels positively.
She gains huge satisfaction from coaching, mentoring and training people in becoming more efficient and effective, therefore allowing them to perform more added-value tasks but also to implement and embed new ways of working. She achieves this through initiatives and methods to motivate and bring out the best in people. Katrina is a certified Lean Six Sigma Green Belt and holds a Bachelor (Hons) degree.
Outside of work, Katrina enjoys spending time with her family, walking their Welsh Spinger Spaniel, CrossFit, running and paddleboarding. She also volunteers at her children’s theatre school to support productions and with her enhanced DBS certificate she recently got to be T.V extra on a soap with her daughter.