Dr Kellie Forbes-Simpson

Entrepreneurship Educator

Kellie is an experienced and award-winning entrepreneurship educator with over ten years of experience in supporting students and graduates in developing and running successful businesses at university and beyond at various institutions. Kellie has worked on both extra-curricular and curricular entrepreneurship education in a variety of disciplines.  While at Northumbria, Kellie supported students in starting Enactus Northumbria.  This social enterprise society competed at its first Enactus National Championship and won Rookie of the Year in 2018, and Kellie received, for the second time, University Adviser of the Year.  

Kellie has been pivotal in developing curriculum innovations in entrepreneurship programmes at Northumbria.  Kellie started as a Team Coach on the BA EBM programme based on the Team Academy approach to management education.  Since then, Kellie has been the Programme Leader for the BA Entrepreneurship programme (now BA Business and Entrepreneurship).  This innovative programme gets students to run and start businesses from day one. Students use their ventures as a vehicle for their business and entrepreneurial learning.  The programme provides a coaching environment where students are coached and supported through the ups and downs of running a business and being a university student.  Kellie is now in the role of Head Coach and supports both colleagues and students with this innovative pedagogical approach.  

Research Interests

Kellie's experience in entrepreneurship education led her to her interest in exploring the identity construction of entrepreneurship education participants. Her PhD thesis explored aspects of authenticity, belonging and distinctiveness, identity regulation, and gender in participant identity work.  Kellie is pursuing projects around understanding learning through an identity formation lens in entrepreneurship education, coaching as a pedagogical approach, and neurodiversity in entrepreneurship education.