Christopher Winchester

Christopher (Chris) C. Winchester is an award-winning Ph.D. candidate in organizational behavior at the Carlson School of Management. At the University of Minnesota, Winchester focuses on theoretical development and the use of advanced mixed methods to investigate the motives and consequences of being a performance outlier (i.e., star/high performers and strategic underperformers). 

Over the past three years, Winchester has been awarded for his research, teaching, and service. For his research, Winchester won the Most Innovative Student Paper Award and received a Best Paper Designation from the Organizational Behavior Division of the Academy of Management (2024). He also won the University of Minnesota Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship (2024), Dare to Care Award (2024), and Grant for DEI (2024), among other small grants. For his teaching, Winchester won the Carlson PhD Student Teaching Award (2023) and the Dedication to Student Learning Award (2023), and was a finalist for the Best Teaching Case Award from The CASE Journal (2022). For his service, Winchester was recognized for his outstanding service to the Academy of Management as Chair of the New Doctoral Student Consortium (2024), won the Best Reviewer Award from the Organizational Behavior Division (2024) and Managerial and Organizational Cognition Division (2023), and led his Honors student to win the Best ESG Thesis Award (2024).

Winchester holds an M.B.A. and B.S. in business administration from the University of Nebraska. He has published multiple research and teaching publications in the Journal of Management, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Journal of Business Ethics, and The CASE Journal. He also has several invited revisions from top journals including the Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Annals, and Journal of Management. Additionally, Winchester co-coordinated and taught Leading Self and Teams (BA 1011) at the University of Minnesota, and serves in several service positions across the field, including as Ph.D. Student Representative for both the Organizational Behavior and Research Methods Divisions of the Academy of Management.

​Prior to academia, Winchester owned and operated Your Wedding Planner, one of Omaha Nebraska's largest wedding planning and floral design businesses. He also has professional experience as a freelance website designer, freelance graphic designer, a marketing associate, and an e-commerce associate which he leverages in his research and teaching. In his free time, he enjoys freelance web design, sand volleyball, and bird watching. Finally, Winchester loves to write about himself in the third person where he gets to write anything he wants, no matter how silly. Before college, Winchester graduated from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.