Left to right: Dr Ellie Stillwell, Tanya Alaaldin, and Caleb Phillips present their initial findings at the 2024 Academy of Management Conference.
We are delighted to share that a Department of Management Project Team has been awarded the 2025 Sam and Bonnie Rechter Fellowship in Positive Leadership.
Tanya Alaaldin, PhD candidate in Employment Relations and Human Resources, Caleb Phillips, PhD candidate in Organisational Behaviour, Dr Ellie Stillwell, Assistant Professor of Management, and Anders Thomassen, MSc Human Resources and Organizations 2024, were awarded the Rechter Fellowship in Positive Leadership for their project on autism and leadership. The award includes a $5,000 grant toward supporting and furthering their research.
Speaking to Tanya and Caleb from the Project Team, they said: “This award is deeply meaningful to our team. It signifies recognition of the importance and value of research on neurodiversity and management — an area that is still emerging within the field. To see this work acknowledged highlights the growing awareness of its relevance.
"This award also validates the dedication and hard work we’ve poured into this project, which has grown significantly from a small collaboration during our first year of our PhDs into something with the potential to make a real impact and contribution.”
Their project began in 2023 with the support of the LSE Research and Impact Support Fund, enabling the group to qualitatively research the experiences of autistic employees with their leaders at work, of which they presented initial results in a neurodiversity symposium at the 2024 Academy of Management Conference in Chicago.
The Rechter Fellowship will enable the team to advance their study into quantitative data collection, exploring emergent themes related to leader curiosity, proactive support behaviors, high quality work relationships, and more.
“This stage is crucial”, they continued, “for producing rigorous, high-quality research that contributes not only to understanding neurodiversity in the workplace but also to the broader field of management. It provides us with the resources and momentum to create work that has the potential to drive meaningful improvements in organizational practices.
“We are incredibly proud that out of many applicants, only five projects were selected, and ours was one of them.”
The Fellowship is awarded by the University of Louisville College of Business Centre for Positive Leadership - on behalf of the Sam and Bonnie Rechter Family Trust - to enable researchers to conduct research on topics related to positive leadership.
Wednesday 4 December 2024