Gillian Bell

Background

About Gillian Bell

With over 20 years experience across food, drink, finance, retail and social enterprise, I felt it was time to go back to school. The challenges that face us all are complex and deep rooted. In order to find solutions, we need to understand them from multiple angles. My interests in food; where, how and who produces it go back to childhood. Growing up in my parents direct to consumer business: Scottish Gourmet. They launched home deliveries of fresh food in 1976, working with small artisan producers across Scotland. That's where my career started, school holidays; visiting suppliers, vacuum packing food, packing customer orders, answering customer queries and calculating response rates. I later launched an online fresh food business, then interests in food security developed whilst studying Gastronomy Today, food is so much more complicated. Our food systems are undergoing transformation, it needs to happen rapidly. How we finance, grow, process, store, ship, shop and consume, in harmony with the planet. When you strip away all the marketing and green washing, what does a healthy diet really look like? What does sustainability even mean? Most recently I have been conducting transdisciplinary research for a PhD, based at the University of Nottingham, Division of Agriculture and Environmental Science. Investigating the barriers to people eating sustainably. I am now seeking new opportunities and challenges. Some career highlights - Became a Fellow of The Royal Society of Arts (FRSA)- Accepted as a Fellow of the Institute of Digital and Direct Marketing (FIDM)- Appointed a Board Director at The Larder Cook School, West Lothian based social enterprise - Working with UNDP in Laos on sustainable economic development, Nation Branding & Gastro Tourism - Awarded MSc in Gastronomy: The interdisciplinary study of food - Helped return Averys, one of the UK’s oldest Wine Merchants to profit - ranked in top 10 food websites in the UK - Launched start-up, direct fresh food company Caledonian Connoisseur, delivering fresh artisan foods to consumers across the UK - Developed a local supplier network for Membership Rewards, Amex New Zealand - Grew SonyCard Visa customer base by 400% in less than a year - Marketing representative on Project Boards at Bank of Scotland for the launch of Internet Share Dealing, Online Mortgage Applications, BoS Credit Cards- Launched first transactional website The Tie Post in 1998 - Awarded second place for Innovation at the DMA UK Awards 1997, runner-up to Tesco