Leslie A. DeChurch is an academic and expert in organizational leadership and teamwork. She is Chair and Professor of Communication Studies (School of Communication) and holds courtesy appointments in Management & Organizations (Kellogg School of Management) and the Department of Psychology (Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences) at Northwestern University. Her research examines the leadership and teamwork that make extraordinary success possible, from the Italian Renaissance to space exploration to human-AI partnerships. 

DeChurch leads the ATLAS lab: Advancing Teams, Leaders, and Systems. ATLAS conducts laboratory and online experiments, meta-analytic integrations, and field studies of teams and leaders to understand their core organizing processes. DeChurch is Director of the immersive undergraduate program Leading a Renaissance, Then and Now, convened in Florence, Italy each summer.

Professor DeChurch was awarded an NSF CAREER to explore Leadership for Virtual Organizational Effectiveness and her research program on teamwork and leadership has been continuously funded by agencies including the National Science Foundation (NSF), National Institutes for Health (NIH), National Aeronautical and Space Agency (NASA), and Army Research Office (ARO). 

She is co-editor of Multiteam Systems: An Organization Form for Dynamic and Complex Environments and recently served on the National Research Council Committee on The Context of Military Environments. She has contributed to several National Research Council Committees on teamwork issues ranging from measurement to innovation. Her work has appeared in top outlets including the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Journal of Applied Psychology (JAP), Academy of Management Review (AMR), Academy of Management Journal (AMJ), and Journal of Management (JoM).

Professor DeChurch holds a PhD in Organizational Psychology and is Fellow of the American Psychological Association (APA), Association for Psychological Science (APS), and the Society of Industrial & Organizational Psychology (SIOP). She is Past-President of INGRoup, the Interdisciplinary Network for Group Research.

*Photo owned by Leslie DeChurch

Education

• PhD, Florida International University, Miami, FL
• MS, Florida International University, Miami, FL
• BS, University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL

Recent Awards and Honors

• 2024 Sage Publishing Award for the best management history paper on leadership, Academy of Management.
• 2023 Sage Publishing Award for the best management history paper on leadership, Academy of Management.
• Fellow of the American Psychological Association (APA), 2016
• Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science (APS), 2016
• Fellow of the Society for Industrial & Organizational Psychology (SIOP), 2016
• President & Chairperson of the Board of INGRoup (Interdisciplinary Network for Group Research), 2016-2020
• NSF CAREER (2011-2017). Leadership for virtual organizational effectiveness

Courses

• Organizational Leadership 
• Team Leadership & Decision Making
• Collaborative Leadership
• Managing AI
• Leading a Renaissance: Then and Now