Wendy Andrews joined academia after a career in business. After obtaining a Master degree in Mechanical Engineering and working for several year in technical-commercial roles and as a business consultant, she obtained an MBA in general management from IESE Business School (Barcelona). She then started her academic career with a Master in Research in Organizational Behavior from London Business School, and wrote her PhD on status and hierarchy in face-to-face groups at the Center for Research on Self and Identity (Southampton, UK). Since then she has written a range of articles, focusing primarily on hierarchy, competition, and leadership.
In 2009 Wendy returned to the Netherlands where she worked at Tilburg University and the Open University. In 2018 she joined the VU Amsterdam as Assistant Professor in Organizational Psychology. There, she is an active member of the Institute of Brain and Behavior Amsterdam and the faculty Impact Board, and the Business Director of the Amsterdam Leadership Lab. She currently (co-)supervises four PhD students and two postdoctoral researchers on topics intersecting leadership, advancement, (organizational) culture and gender, and using a mix of experimental, survey-based and cognitive methods. Her work has received funding from an ESRC scholarship, two NWO grants, three CSC scholarships awarded to her PhD students, and a startersgrant from the Dutch government. She has also created a web-based tool, SALT, that organizations can use to determine the optimal leadership style for a specific role or vacancy.
In all her work, Wendy seeks to use her unique experience within as well as outside academia to build connections between universities and the business world. Ultimately, she strives to develop knowledge and create tools that find their way to the managers and organizations that can benefit from them.
