Professor Karl Leydecker FRSE is the Interim Chief Executive of The Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA).

Karl is former Senior Vice-Principal at the University of Aberdeen. Previously he was Vice-Principal Learning and Teaching at the University of Dundee. His disciplinary background is German and Comparative Literature.

Karl was appointed by the Scottish sector to lead Scotland’s 2017-2020 QAA Enhancement Theme, Evidence for Enhancement: Improving the Student Experience, and has served on a range of Scottish and UK committees covering quality assurance, quality enhancement and student information.

Karl recently served as a member of the Royal Irish Academy’s Higher Education Futures Taskforce, and the Royal Society of Edinburgh’s Tertiary Education Futures Group.

Current connections with HE institutions (other than employment):
Karl's daughter studies at the Royal Northern College of Music while his son studies at the University of St Andrews. His sister is a Council Member of the University of Nottingham.

Connections with other bodies:
Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Caroline became Chief Operating and Finance Officer at QAA in 2024, having previously worked as Finance Director since 2019, and Head of Finance and Planning before that. She is responsible for the strategic management of QAA's financial resources and planning. 

Prior to joining QAA, Caroline was Head of Finance for Karen Millen and Director of Finance at Nelson Thornes. She also has extensive experience of working as an accountant and auditor across a number of different industry sectors. Caroline is a graduate of the University of Manchester.

Tom leads the Governance team and Executive office, and is QAA’s Company Secretary. He also has responsibility for the Policy & Communications and Compliance & Reviewer Services teams.

Tom trained as a management and strategy consultant in London and Chicago, and worked mostly for public-sector clients, as well as an in-house role at the law firm Freshfields. In 2005 he joined the Civil Service, where he held a series of policy positions in competition, energy and climate change, and several communication roles including as a press officer and as a ministerial speechwriter. He was a spending lead in HM Treasury, including at the time of the 2010 Spending Review. His final Whitehall role was at UK Government Investments, the UK Government’s centre of excellence in corporate governance and corporate finance. In 2017 he took a position as Vice President Strategy at the National Nuclear Laboratory, before joining QAA in April 2020.

Rob is the Executive Director of Quality Assurance and Enhancement at QAA, with executive oversight of the Contract and Regulatory Services teams, having previously been Director of Assessment Services and Access to Higher Education. He joined QAA in 2022 and was responsible for leading the Designated Quality Body function, until QAA ceased to perform that role in March 2023. This included working closely with the Office for Students, and the delivery of our methods to assess quality and standards for new providers, providers seeking degree-awarding powers and the external quality assurance for end-point assessment organisations (also working with IfATE). 

Previously, Rob held senior roles at the OfS and HEFCE, and has experience in student protection, the regulation of independent providers, teaching funding policy, the design and operation of student number controls, and a background in student experience policy and practice from earlier roles.

Eve Alcock is Director of Public Affairs at QAA where she leads the organisation’s policy, stakeholder relationships and communications work. She is also a Fellow on Aspen UK’s Rising Leader fellowship programme. Prior to QAA she spent two years at the Clean Air Fund, an international charitable foundation tackling air pollution globally, where she worked across communications, advocacy and strategic partnerships. Eve has previously chaired QAA’s Student Strategic Advisory Committee as an independent board member. Her background in the higher education sector comes from two years as President of the University of Bath’s Students’ Union where she was also a governor of the University and Chair of the SU’s Board of Trustees. She is passionate about social justice, Korean food and good coffee. 

Debra Macfarlane is Director of Regulatory Services at QAA. She joined QAA in 2013. An experienced quality professional, Debra has a wide-ranging background in tertiary education, focusing on quality, assessment, feedback, and employability. Her career spans roles in both universities and industry. From 2021 to 2023, Debra was seconded to the Scottish Funding Council, where she worked on developing a tertiary approach to quality for Scotland's colleges and universities before returning to QAA in 2023 to implement those arrangements.

Debra holds undergraduate and postgraduate degrees from the University of St. Andrews, a Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice from the University of Glasgow, and was a previous Robert T. Jones Memorial Scholar at Emory University in Atlanta.