Introducing… Amy Woodgate, Secretary of the ALT Independent Consultancy & Career Pathways SIG
Amy Woodgate, Independent Consultancy and Career Pathways SIG Secretary
Q: What do you do?
I am an external / freelance consultant. I lead a small consultancy firm that supports education-based strategy and production based projects.
Q: Which sectors do you support?
All sectors and all subjects! We’re always up for a challenge.
At this moment, I have contracts with a business school, Universities, EU-funded initiatives, a government partnership, and a social enterprise consultancy. Subjects range from food security, to strategic thinking, to AI, Gender in the transport system, PGR induction and financial safeguarding. That’s just this month!
Q: How do you usually refer to yourself – e.g. Learning Technologist, Learning Designer, Instructional Designer, etc.?
I go through phases – often dependent on the nature of the projects we are currently supporting. For example, if I have been writing a lot of tenders for larger bids, I would brand myself as a ‘Creative Director’, but day-to-day I bounce between project manager and learning designer roles so would use one of those.
More so over the years, I have felt the distinction between LT, LD, and ID has become more vague, as there is an expectation in this field that you would have a bit of all those qualities (if not be all those three roles combined!)
Q: If you’re a consultant or freelancer, what do you love about that?
I love the diversity of projects, clients, and topics. Whilst I value the flexibility, the flip of that is it can be lonely. I used to have a fairly large team, but due to recent economic changes, we had to downsize. I really miss the buzz of larger teams, so it is nice to balance individual projects with being a contractor in an established team.
Q: What attracted you to this SIG?
It is great to be reminded that there are others in the same boat as you! We can get so focused on projects and tasks at hand, that we forget to look up and get support from the wider community. Networking is great, but I sometimes feel like the only education consultant in the village… but there’s actually loads of us! 🙂
Q: Anything else you’d like to share?
It’s really easy to view other consultants as your ‘competitors’ but there is so much strength in coming together. One of the key elements of this SIG is to provide a space that is not recorded so you can ask those burning questions – like how much should I charge for X? or is Y license worth the exorbitant fee? – or just ask for help/support and not feel like you need to perform for the camera! You never know, you might find your people and future project collaborators!