Eileen Chou

About

Eileen Chou is interim dean of the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia, leading a multidisciplinary faculty of scholars and practitioners committed to creating new knowledge, developing ethical and effective leaders, and advancing solutions to humanity’s greatest policy challenges.

An award-winning scholar of organizational behavior, Chou studies the social, psychological, and organizational mechanisms that shape leadership, cooperation, and decision making — including how incentives, trust, hierarchy, and emerging technologies influence interpersonal interactions and collective performance.

Chou’s research has appeared in leading journals including Nature Human Behaviour, Psychological Science, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, American Economics Journal – Microeconomics, and Organizational Psychology Review. Her scholarship has been recognized with the Academy of Management’s Best Paper Award, multiple Best Paper Proceedings honors, and the International Association for Conflict Management’s Most Influential Journal Article Award. She has also received the University of Virginia’s All-University Teaching Award, Batten’s Faculty Excellence in Teaching and Faculty Excellence in Service awards, and was elected a Fellow of the Society of Experimental Social Psychology.

Chou joined the Batten School faculty in 2012 and served as associate dean for academic affairs from 2023-2026, as well as a Batten Family Bicentennial Teacher-Scholar Leadership Professor of Public Policy. She has taught courses that blend behavioral and social-psychology theory with applied, values-driven practice in leadership, negotiation, and civic engagement.

She received her Ph.D. in Management and Organizations from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, an M.S. in Social Science from the California Institute of Technology, and a B.A., summa cum laude, in Psychology and Economics from the University of California, Los Angeles.