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The Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship has declared that Ana Bakshi has been appointed as its new executive director. Bakshi began her tenure at the commencement of the fall semester and will work in close partnership with the managing director, Ethernet Inventors Professor of the Practice Bill Aulet, to enhance the center’s stature.
“Ana is exceptionally suited for this position. She possesses a profound and distinguished background in entrepreneurship education at the highest levels, along with remarkable leadership and implementation aptitudes,” remarks Aulet. “Since our initial meeting 12 years ago, I have been incredibly impressed with her dedication to fostering top-quality centers and institutes for entrepreneurs, initially at King’s College London and subsequently at Oxford University. This ideal expertise is further enriched by her experience in guiding high-growth enterprises, most recently serving as the chief operating officer in an award-winning AI startup. I’m honored and elated to welcome her to MIT — her insight and enthusiasm will significantly enhance our community and the field at large.”
A dynamic environment necessitates elevating standards in entrepreneurship education
The urgency to elevate standards for innovation-driven entrepreneurship education is both timely and pressing. The pace of change is accelerating daily, particularly with artificial intelligence, creating new challenges that need resolution while also intensifying existing issues in climate, healthcare, manufacturing, the future of work, education, and economic disparity, to name just a few. The world demands more entrepreneurs and higher-quality entrepreneurs.
Bakshi enters the Trust Center during a thrilling period in its evolution. MIT is leading the way in cultivating individuals and systems that can transform challenges into opportunities using an entrepreneurial mindset, skillset, and operational approach. Bakshi’s extensive experience and accomplishments will be crucial in capitalizing on these opportunities. “I am sincerely honored to join the Trust Center at such a critical juncture,” Bakshi notes. “In an age marked by both significant challenges and extraordinary possibilities, the future will be crafted by those courageous enough to act, and MIT will spearhead this movement.”
Converting academic research into tangible impact
Bakshi brings a decade of experience in establishing two premier entrepreneurship centers from inception. She was the founding director at King’s College and subsequently at Oxford. In this capacity, she oversaw all facets of these centers, including fundraising efforts.
During her tenure at Oxford, she created a data-driven method for assessing the effectiveness of their programs, as demonstrated by a 61-page report titled “Universities: Drivers of Prosperity and Economic Recovery.”
As the director of the Oxford Foundry (Oxford’s cross-university entrepreneurship hub), Bakshi prioritized investing in ambitious founders and talent. The center received support from global entrepreneurial figures, including the founders of LinkedIn and Twitter, with corporate partnerships involving Santander and EY, alongside investment funds such as Oxford Science Enterprises (OSE). As of 2021, the startups backed by the Foundry and King’s College had raised over $500 million and produced nearly 3,000 jobs, spanning varied sectors including health tech, climate tech, cybersecurity, fintech, and deep tech spin-offs focused on world-class science.
Additionally, she established the highly effective and economically sustainable Entrepreneurship School, Oxford’s inaugural digital online learning platform.
Bakshi arrives at MIT after nearly two years in the private sector as the chief operating officer (COO) of a rapidly expanding artificial intelligence startup, Quench.ai, with locations in London and New York City. She was the inaugural C-suite member at Quench.ai, fulfilling the role of COO and now serves as senior advisor, assisting companies in unlocking value from their knowledge through AI.
Right circumstances, right timing, right individual accelerating at the pace of MIT AI
Since its founding, and propelled further in the 1940s by the establishment and operation of the RadLab, entrepreneurship has remained at the core of MIT’s identity and mission.
“MIT has been a pioneer in entrepreneurship for many years. It has now become the third pillar of the institution, along with education and research,” states Mark Gorenberg ’76, chair of the MIT Corporation. “I am thrilled to welcome such a transformative figure as Ana to the Trust Center team, and I eagerly anticipate the influence she will have on the students and the broader academic community at MIT as we embark on an exciting new era in company building, propelled by the advanced use of AI and emerging technologies.”
“In a period where we are reimagining management education, entrepreneurship as an interdisciplinary domain creating impact is increasingly vital for our future. Having such an experienced and accomplished leader in both academia and the startup realm, particularly in AI, emphasizes our pledge to be a global leader in this arena,” asserts Richard M. Locke, John C Head III Dean at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
“MIT is a distinctive nexus of research, innovation, and entrepreneurship, and this unique blend generates massive positive influence that resonates globally,” remarks Frederic Kerrest, MIT Sloan MBA ’09, co-founder of Okta, and member of the MIT Corporation. “In a swiftly evolving, AI-driven landscape, Ana possesses the skills and knowledge to further expedite MIT’s global leadership in entrepreneurship education to ensure that our students initiate and scale the next generation of groundbreaking, innovation-driven startups.”
Before her tenure at Oxford and King’s College, Bakshi was an elected council member representing over 6,000 constituents, held positions in international NGOs, and directed product execution strategy at MAHI, an award-winning family-run craft sauce startup, available in thousands of major retailers throughout the U.K. Bakshi serves on the advisory council for the conservation charity Save the Elephants, utilizing AI-driven and scientific methodologies to mitigate human-wildlife conflict and safeguard elephant populations. Her work and impact have been featured in various publications including FT, Forbes, BBC, The Times, and The Hill. Bakshi has been recognized twice as a Top 50 Woman in Tech (U.K.), most recently in 2025.
“As AI transforms how we learn, how we construct, and how we scale, my attention will focus on assisting MIT in expanding its support for exceptional talent — students and faculty — equipped with the skills, ecosystem, and resources to translate knowledge into impact,” Bakshi shares.
35 years of influence to date
The Trust Center was established in 1990 by the late Professor Edward Roberts and serves all MIT students across every school and discipline. It supports over 60 courses and extensive extracurricular initiatives, including the delta v academic accelerator. A significant portion of the center’s efforts is based on the Disciplined Entrepreneurship methodology, which provides a validated strategy for creating new ventures. More than a thousand schools and organizations across the globe utilize Disciplined Entrepreneurship literature and resources to teach entrepreneurship.
Now, with AI-driven tools like Orbit and JetPack, the Trust Center is transforming the method by which entrepreneurship is taught and practiced. Its mission is to cultivate the next generation of innovation-driven entrepreneurs while advancing the discipline more broadly to ensure it is both rigorous and applicable. This strategy of leveraging proven evidence-based methods, emerging technologies, the creativity of MIT students, and responding to industry changes is parallel to how MIT established the field of chemical engineering in the 1890s. The intended outcome in both scenarios was to develop a comprehensive, integrated, scalable, rigorous, and practical curriculum to produce a new workforce capable of addressing the nation’s and world’s most significant challenges.
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