Dr. Emily Choi
Executive Director, Caruth Institute for Entrepreneurship; Professor of Practice, Management, Strategy & Entrepreneurship; Cox School of Business, Southern Methodist University
Fmr. Associate Professor of Instruction & Director of Innovation & Entrepreneurship, Naveen Jindal School of Management, University of Texas at Dallas
From Serendipity to Strategy: How One Professor Turned a Chance Assignment Into a Mission for the Future
Dr. Emily Choi didn’t plan to become a national security innovation educator. In fact, when the Hacking for Defense (H4D) program first came to the University of Texas at Dallas, she was transitioning out of a research-heavy role into a teaching-focused one. An opportunity to lead a new course that was still unfamiliar to her landed on her desk.
“They selected me,” she recalls. “It kind of fell into my lap. I didn’t fully understand what it was, but I’m incredibly grateful it did.”
After attending Common Mission Project’s educator training, the lightbulb went on. The methodology didn’t just make sense, it felt familiar. It reminded her of the problem-first, real-world urgency she experienced in her doctoral work and in NSF's I-Corps program. “You only connect the dots looking backward,” she says. “Now I see exactly why I was led down this path.”
Today, Choi brings that same clarity of purpose to her new post as Executive Director of the Caruth Institute for Entrepreneurship at SMU, where she’s building an entirely new ecosystem, and pushing to bring H4D along with her.
A Different Kind of Classroom
Teaching H4D transformed her approach to education. No longer a one-way interaction, the classroom became a two-way laboratory. “Every semester, I learn as much, if not more, than the students,” she says. “Each team is different. Every problem is different. I have to evolve in how I support them.”
That evolution has reshaped how she mentors, teaches, and leads. As both educator and administrator, Choi now sees herself less as a lecturer and more as a curator: of knowledge, of urgency, of agency. “I want students to realize they can do this. They can define the problem. They can ask the right questions. They can lead us into a world we don’t even know how to describe yet.”
The Builders She’ll Never Forget
Choi still thinks about her very first H4D class back in 2021. “They were just so entrepreneurial, so curious, and willing to take a chance, on a new course, with a new professor, at the height of COVID,” she recalls. One team hit a dead end halfway through the semester. Instead of getting discouraged, they got energized. “They loved the pivot. That mindset and finding the joy in problem-solving. That’s what H4D unlocks.”
Two of those students remain in touch. That summer, they helped Choi refine the course and even built out a promotional campaign to draw future students in. “They weren’t just students anymore,” she says. “They were co-creators.”
Bringing the Mission to SMU
Now at Southern Methodist University, Choi sees a new opportunity. “The students here are vibrant, entrepreneurial, and hungry for impact. They’re receptive to this kind of experiential learning. I want to launch H4D here not as a one-off course, but as an interdisciplinary cornerstone.”
She’s building on her experience from UTD, bringing together students from across majors (engineering, business, policy, design, etc.) to solve hard national security problems through a classroom that moves fast and demands real traction.
“In a world being transformed by generative AI and exponential tech change, today’s students understand that the jobs, and the challenges, they’ll face don’t even exist yet. H4D gives them the mindset to lead through that uncertainty.”
What’s Next
Emily Choi didn’t seek out H4D. But in hindsight, it was exactly the course she was meant to teach. Now, she's bringing that mission to a new generation of students, those ready to build, ready to lead, and ready to shape a future worth defending.