Andrew Hanna, assistant professor of management and Seacrest Teaching Fellow at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln College of Business, received the 2026 Rising Star Early Career Award from the Network of Leadership Scholars (NLS) during the Academy of Management Annual Meeting in Philadelphia in early August.
The award recognizes a junior academic making a significant contribution to the field of leadership and promotes the recipient's work within the academic community.
“It is always something to be grateful for when your community believes that what you do matters,” Hanna said. “Your initial years in this career can be difficult, and sometimes the signals that you're doing the right things can be hard to find. Hearing from the leadership research community that they believe you're making a difference, and that they appreciate your work, is a real honor.”
Hanna's research focuses on emergent leadership, examining how individuals influence others without holding positions with formal power. He noted the concept is also called informal leadership in some contexts.
“We often think of influential people as those with formal authority,” Hanna said. “I became really interested in how people can have the impact of a formal leader because of who they are, not because of their title.”
That curiosity began during the first year of his doctoral program when he noticed a fellow student several years ahead of him.
“People in my department listened closely whenever he spoke, which was not often,” Hanna said. “It was very interesting to me.”
His research has been published in academic journals, including the Journal of Management, Personnel Psychology and the Annual Review of Organizational Psychology & Organizational Behavior.
Allie Garcia, a Ph.D. student in management from San Diego, nominated Hanna for the NLS award.
“Andrew exemplifies the very phenomenon he studies, leadership emergence. Without relying on formal authority, he creates environments where people feel intellectually energized, supported and motivated to pursue ambitious ideas,” she said.
Knowing his academic accomplishments would speak for themselves, Garcia wanted the committee to know about his impact on the people and communities around him.
“Andrew creates research environments defined by intellectual generosity. He pushes teams toward greater rigor while making sure students have room to contribute and develop their own voice,” Garcia said. “He celebrates other people's wins, shows up when things are hard, and creates opportunities for students who have nothing to offer him in return. Andrew genuinely cares, and you feel it in everything he touches, and that is why I nominated him.”
Hanna also contributes to the profession through service with the Academy of Management (AOM) and Southern Management Association (SMA). He has held elected leadership roles, with SMA's board of directors and as chair of the AOM Research Methods Division-CARMA Methods Consortium, and was named SMA's 2025 K. Micki Kacmar Volunteer of the Year.
“He will run a three- or four-hour session on structural equation modeling for doctoral students who are not his students, and then get on a plane to do it again for scholars halfway around the world,” Garcia said. “He does not simply teach research skills. Andrew builds empowered scholars.”
Earlier this year, he served as the keynote speaker for the Early Career Workshop at the Yönetim Akademisi Derneği-Turkish Academy of Management in Ankara, Türkiye. He also presented at an entrepreneurship and monetizing research lecture series at Tokyo Nodai University in Japan. He plans to continue his research efforts globally, representing AOM as a keynote speaker at the EKA Institute of Applied Sciences in Riga, Latvia, in April 2027.
“This recognition is well-deserved as Dr. Hanna is establishing an impressive research record,” said Jake Messersmith, chair of Nebraska’s Department of Management. “He is consistently pursuing questions that are theoretically meaningful and practically relevant. He is committed to employing rigorous, advanced research methods that strengthen the quality and credibility of his work, and he is a meaningful contributor to our culture of scholarship. We're proud of all that Andrew has done and look forward to seeing his work continue to progress.”
Hanna also brings his research into the classroom as “a powerful explanatory tool” to share with students.
“No matter what you find interesting, there is research to expand your interests and curiosities,” he said. “As future leaders in the business world, helping lessen the theory-to-practice gap by exposing students to research and helping them understand the practicality of its takeaways is critical.”
For Hanna, using research in the classroom makes him a stronger scholar. "Teaching about research also strengthens my ability to write, which I think has helped me find ways to conduct leadership research that people appreciate,” he said.
Hanna credits many mentors and collaborators for helping shape his research, including Larry Williams, professor of management at Texas Tech University; Bradley Kirkman, Shelton Professor of Leadership at North Carolina State University; Troy Smith, associate professor of management at the University of Oklahoma; Bill Gardner, Horn Professor of Management at Texas Tech University; and Fred Luthans, emeritus professor of management at Nebraska.
“It’s great to be a part of Nebraska's long-standing tradition of great leadership researchers,” Hanna said. “Allie has been a phenomenal doctoral student to work with and the opportunity to mentor her has undoubtedly helped me develop in new ways that have made me better at what I do. It is a little surreal to be recognized, but it's an equally strong honor.”
