Admissions Testing Expert, Educator, Policy consultant, Advocate for Access
Renowned for his pithy insightful analysis, Akil Bello has influenced the testing and education conversation from the dregs of the internet to the college lectern to Capitol Hill. Currently, he serves as Senior Director of Advocacy and Advancement at FairTest, where he works to build resources and tools to ensure that large scale assessment tests are used in a more limited, transparent, and responsible way to benefit students. As prolific a speaker as he is a writer, Bello has delivered thousands of workshops for families, hundreds of conference sessions for counselors and educators, dozens of presentations to university administrators, and a score of well-received keynote addresses.
Bello is an admissions testing expert with no psychometric training, a nationally recognized college admissions policy wonk with no advanced degree, and an entrepreneur of the week and 40 under 40 award winner who never attended business school. His expertise doesn’t come from credentials or brand affiliations but instead has been earned through years of work examining standardized testing from every imaginable angle: test taker, test cheater, College Board proctor, teacher, tutor, trainer, program developer, test prep company founder, researcher, journalist, and policy advocate. An international titan of the shadow education industry, Bello has launched companies, consulted with universities, developed dozens of preparation programs for more than ten different high-stakes tests, trained hundreds of instructors, and successfully tutored thousands of students. His commentary in Netflix’s Operation Varsity Blues documentary not only made BuzzFeed’s top moments and fueled public discourse, but his work consulting with the production team helped the film reach the top of Netflix’s ratings.
As founding partner and CEO for Bell Curves, a test preparation company, Bello worked extensively to improve outcomes for low-income and under-represented students. After successfully selling Bell Curves, he worked as the director of equity and access at the Princeton Review, where his focus was on helping public schools, non-profit organizations, and community-based organizations understand standardized tests and develop affordable solutions for their students.
Over his career, Bello has established himself as an important voice in the higher education ecosystem through his advocacy, research, and writing. He is a frequent contributor to education coverage and has appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe and multiple times on CBS. His insights have been included in dozens of articles, including The New York Times, The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, The Richmond Times-Dispatch, and WBUR. His writing covers a wide range of educational topics but is always centered on increasing access and exposing policies that act as gatekeepers to educational opportunities. He was a regular contributor for Forbes.com and he has been published in The Washington Post, The New York Daily News, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Education, and Word in Black.
Untainted by Ivy League elitism or degrees, Bello has managed to use his expertise in shadow education to engage stakeholders at every level from the public school parent to the corporate CEO. His unique blend of humor and insight exposes difficult truths without offending or alienating. Epitomizing his ability to engage a wide audience and provoke important shifts in the conversation, Bello’s term “highly rejective college” was entered into the Congressional record, inspired blogs, mentioned in popular TED Talks, written in nearly every major paper, whispered at the water cooler, and even added to the Urban Dictionary.
Akil Bello resides in New York City with his beautiful wife and two amazing sons.
Praise for Akil Bello’s Presentations
“One of the best DEI sessions I’ve ever been to.”
—Amazon employee, from Amazon’s
annual event for international hiring managers
“Huge thanks to Akil Bello for an inspiring and hilarious talk at our Mercy University All Hands meeting. We are united in the fight to ensure everyone can access an excellent, transformative #college education.”
—Susan Parish, President, Mercy College
“Your presentation was stellar, engaging and just damn good! Thank you for sharing.”
—Kimberly Taylor-Benns, Ed.D., Assistant Vice President &
Dean for Enrollment Management, La Salle University
“Thank you for an incredible and inspiring conversation! You will be receiving an influx of emails of institutions wanting to grab you up for a talk because of how amazing you were. I am eternally grateful for you devoting time to our conference.”
—Edith Perez-Montanez, Assistant Director of CSTEP APACS Conference
“By the way, we discussed your keynote in our staff meeting yesterday and everyone agreed you were the best and most engaging keynote speaker we’ve seen!”
—Melodie Baker, Just Equations Conference
“This was a long time coming. I had the pleasure of welcoming my friend, Akil Bello, to Mercy University this morning. I have been following his work for years and always knew we would resonate with the incredible staff and faculty at Mercy. Boy, did he deliver. Thank you for validating our work and mission and inspiring us to get even better.”
—Adam Castro, Mercy College
