Christopher W. Craighead is the FedEx Chair in Supply Chain Management at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville’s Haslam College of Business. His primary research interest is strategic supply chain management with a focus on supply chain disruptions, buyer-supplier exchanges and the supply chain-entrepreneurship interface. His research has been published in several high-profile journals. He has received several research fellowships, competitive grants and awards.

Craighead teaches strategic sourcing in the department’s undergraduate program and theoretical and research foundations in its doctoral program. He has received awards for teaching excellence at four universities. He has served as dissertation chair for seven students in three universities.

Craighead serves as the logistics department editor at Decision Sciences, an associate editor of the Journal of Supply Chain Management and a senior editor at the Journal of Business Logistics. He has received multiple awards for reviewing and editing excellence.

Craighead’s research has fueled over 350 executive education programs. At Penn State, he worked as the director of research of the Center for Supply Chain Research, where he served as the principal liaison between faculty and industry partners. Craighead’s career has culminated in both theoretical and pragmatic effect through connecting academia and industry. He has strongly advocated for such a career strategy, co-authoring papers geared toward helping others in the field realize this dual impact.