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Emily Choi didn’t set out to work in higher education. But when she started at SMU Cox in 2025, she knew it was meant to be and that joining SMU would be the “cherry on top” of her career.

Choi first honed her entrepreneurial bona fides leading her own startups. Then, while working at Apple, she started thinking about going back to school so she could dig deep and refine the research and creative problem-solving skills she realized were central to success in business.

But even then, she thought it’d be a relatively short stint before returning to Silicon Valley. “Then I fell in love with research and the fact that research itself is entrepreneurial,” she says.

Now, after earning a Ph.D. in management at the University of California, Berkeley, and being a faculty member for more than a decade at The University of Texas at Dallas, the highly experienced researcher, instructor and entrepreneur has taken the helm at the Caruth Institute for Entrepreneurship.

As executive director, Choi will help budding business owners sharpen their skills through a cutting-edge curriculum while connecting them to the resourceful entrepreneurship ecosystem on and off campus, including potential investors. Plus, she’ll help 32 students navigate their careers by sharing the knowledge she’s picked up in her years in both academia and industry.

To get to know one of the newest leaders on campus, we sat down with Choi and asked her some questions about her career, her plans for the Caruth Institute and what she does to unwind.

What brought you to SMU Cox?

Emily Choi: I saw the Cox School would be the cherry on top of my career. I wanted to pivot and level up in the world of entrepreneurship education. This was an opportunity for me to do so as part of the Caruth Institute.

Caruth already has a very strong, very respected foundation in entrepreneurship education. I wanted to build upon its legacy by collaborating with a world-class faculty team and my counterparts at the Spears Institute and Hart Institute for Technology, Innovation and Entrepreneurship. We have a significant opportunity to expand and deepen the scope of entrepreneurship education, making connections between students and real-world startup experiences and strengthening thought leadership in entrepreneurship research.

You worked in industry before moving to academia. Tell us about that journey.

EC: I never thought I’d end up in academia. I went to school, got an MBA and expected to work in business internationally. My adolescence was spent overseas at an international school, so I always enjoyed new experiences. Along my journey, I was always looking to learn. My mother is a big influence on my love of learning.

I worked in industry for about seven years—half of that time in the startup world. I was part of a founding team in Silicon Valley, and I realized there was a lot I didn’t know and needed to learn. Later, when I was at Apple, I thought a lot about what separated Apple from the other startups, so that was the impetus. I thought, “Let me go back to school and really dig deep.”

I didn’t expect to stay in academia; I thought I’d go back out into the world and start something else with all this new knowledge. But I fell in love with research and the fact that it’s about creating and asking deep, big questions. Research is discovering something new by identifying a gap or problem or challenge, then coming up with a solution, just as entrepreneurs do. It’s exciting! 

I also love that the more I research, the more I learn, and then I get to share it. In my view, if you boil down academia to what it’s really about, it’s generating and disseminating new knowledge. I’m so thankful for my journey and my mentors who guided me along the way. 

What are the biggest challenges facing entrepreneurs today, and how is the Cox School addressing them?

EC: Competition will always be a challenge, but I think the biggest challenge right now is change—how it happens exponentially. AI is quickly reshaping industries, innovations build faster on top of the last innovations, founders are in spaces where there are often no legal or institutional structures. In the middle of this whirlwind, entrepreneurs are expected to gain legitimacy for their product or service.

That’s why our curriculum aims to prepare students to lead through these complexities and unknowns. We are teaching entrepreneurial thinking: Ask questions to validate your assumptions about problems, and then use interdisciplinary knowledge to solve those problems.

What will success in this role look like for you and the Caruth Institute?

EC: The Caruth Institute has a strong reputation for being a leader in entrepreneurship education, so for me, success is continuing that leadership and building upon it in a forward-looking way. It’s continuously increasing academic excellence, which means strengthening the curriculum and the pathways and collaborations with other courses or programs in entrepreneurship across campus.

Entrepreneurship is one of the newer disciplines in academia, and it touches almost every discipline in a university. We know scientists and engineers who want to commercialize their inventions. They’re entrepreneurs! So I’d love to see the curriculum strengthened within Cox and linked to or intersecting with the entrepreneurship programs across the campus. Success will be when SMU students—current and prospective—see this and say, “Aha, here’s my pathway. Here’s where I can start or grow my passion project.”

What do you like to do for fun?

EC: I like to be active, whether that’s running or going on walks with friends. And when I have time, I love going to see live music. The local music scene here in Dallas is amazing and very diverse. The community the musicians have built is so vibrant and supportive. I’ve always loved music. My father’s side of the family is full of beautiful singers and musicians, so coming to Dallas and discovering all this live music has been like therapy for my soul.