The Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship announced that Ana Bakshi has been named its recent executive director. Bakshi stepped into the role in the beginning of the autumn semester and can collaborate closely with the managing director, Ethernet Inventors Professor of the Practice Bill Aulet, to raise the middle to higher levels.
“Ana is uniquely qualified for this role. She brings a deep and highly decorated background in entrepreneurship education at the best levels, together with exceptional leadership and execution skills,” says Aulet. “Since I first met her 12 years ago, I even have been extraordinarily impressed together with her commitment to create the highest-quality centers and institutes for entrepreneurs, first at King’s College London after which at Oxford University. This ideal skill set is compounded by her experience in leading high-growth firms, most recently because the chief operation officer in an award-winning AI startup. I’m honored and thrilled to welcome her to MIT — her knowledge and energy will greatly elevate our community, and the sector as an entire.”
A rapidly changing environment creates imperative for raising the bar for entrepreneurship education
The necessity to raise the bar for innovation-driven entrepreneurship education is each timely and urgent. The speed of change is getting faster and faster every single day, especially with artificial intelligence, and is generating recent problems that must be solved, in addition to exacerbating existing problems in climate, health care, manufacturing, way forward for work, education, and economic stratification, to call but a couple of. The world needs more entrepreneurs and higher entrepreneurs.
Bakshi joins the Trust Center at an exciting time in its history. MIT is on the forefront of helping to develop people and systems that may turn challenges into opportunities using an entrepreneurial mindset, skill set, and way of operating. Bakshi’s deep experience and success shall be key to unlocking this chance. “I’m truly honored to hitch the Trust Center at such a pivotal moment,” Bakshi says. “In an era defined by each extraordinary challenges and extraordinary possibilities, the longer term shall be built by those daring enough to try, and MIT shall be on the forefront of this.”
Translating academic research into real-world impact
Bakshi has a decade of experience constructing two world-class entrepreneurship centers from the bottom up. She served because the founding director at King’s College after which at Oxford. On this role, she was answerable for all features of those centers, including fundraising.
While at Oxford, she authored a data-driven approach to determining efficacy of outcomes for his or her programs, as evidenced by a 61-page study, “Universities: Drivers of Prosperity and Economic Recovery.”
Because the director of the Oxford Foundry (Oxford’s cross-university entrepreneurship center), Bakshi focused on investing in ambitious founders and talent. The middle was backed by global entrepreneurial leaders corresponding to the founders of LinkedIn and Twitter, with corporate partnerships including Santander and EY, and investment funds including Oxford Science Enterprises (OSE). As of 2021, the startups supported by the Foundry and King’s College have raised over $500 million and have created nearly 3,000 jobs, spanning diverse industries including health tech, climate tech, cybersecurity, fintech, and deep tech spinouts specializing in world-class science.
As well as, she built the highly successful and economically sustainable Entrepreneurship School, Oxford’s first digital online learning platform.
Bakshi involves MIT after having worked within the private sector because the chief operating officer (COO) in a rapidly growing artificial intelligence startup for nearly two years, Quench.ai, with offices in London and Recent York City. She was the primary C-suite worker at Quench.ai, serving as COO and now senior advisor, helping firms unlock value from their knowledge through AI.
Right place, right time, right person moving on the speed of MIT AI
Since its inception, then turbocharged within the Nineteen Forties with the creation and operation of the RadLab, and continuing to this present day, entrepreneurship is on the core of MIT’s identity and mission.
“MIT has been a pacesetter in entrepreneurship for many years. It’s now the third leg of the varsity, alongside teaching and research,” says Mark Gorenberg ’76, chair of the MIT Corporation. “I’m excited to have such a transformative leader as Ana join the Trust Center team, and I look ahead to the impact she’s going to have on the scholars and the broader academic community at MIT as we enter an exciting recent phase in company constructing, driven by the accelerated use of AI and emerging technologies.”
“In a time where we’re rethinking management education, entrepreneurship as an interdisciplinary field to create impact is much more vital to our future. To have such an experienced and achieved leader in academia and the startup world, especially in AI, reinforces our commitment to be a world leader on this field,” says Richard M. Locke, John C Head III Dean on the MIT Sloan School of Management.
“MIT is a singular hub of research, innovation, and entrepreneurship, and that special mix creates massive positive impact that ripples around the globe,” says Frederic Kerrest, MIT Sloan MBA ’09, co-founder of Okta, and member of the MIT Corporation. “In a rapidly changing, AI-driven world, Ana has the talents and experience to further speed up MIT’s global leadership in entrepreneurship education to be sure that our students launch and scale the following generation of groundbreaking, innovation-driven startups.”
Prior to her time at Oxford and King’s College, Bakshi served as an elected councilor representing 6,000-plus constituents, held roles in international nongovernmental organizations, and led product execution strategy at MAHI, an award-winning family-led craft sauce startup, available in 1000’s of major retailers across the U.K. Bakshi sits on the advisory council for conservation charity Save the Elephants, leveraging AI-driven and scientific approaches to cut back human-wildlife conflict and protect elephant populations. Her work and impact have been featured across , , BBC, , and . Bakshi was twice honored as a Top 50 Woman in Tech (U.K.), most recently in 2025.
“As AI changes how we learn, how we construct, and the way we scale, my focus shall be on helping MIT expand its support for phenomenal talent — students and college — with the talents, ecosystem, and backing to show knowledge into impact,” Bakshi says.
35 years of impact so far
The Trust Center was founded in 1990 by the late Professor Edward Roberts and serves all MIT students across all schools and all disciplines. It supports 60-plus courses and extensive extracurricular programming, including the delta v academic accelerator. Much of the work of the middle is generated through the Disciplined Entrepreneurship methodology, which offers a proven approach to create recent ventures. Over a thousand schools and other organizations the world over use Disciplined Entrepreneurship books and resources to show entrepreneurship.
Now, with AI-powered tools like Orbit and JetPack, the Trust Center is changing the best way that entrepreneurship is taught and practiced. Its mission is to provide the following generation of innovation-driven entrepreneurs while advancing the sector more broadly to make it each rigorous and practical. This approach of leveraging proven evidence-based methodology, emerging technology, the ingenuity of MIT students, and responding to industry shifts is comparable to how MIT established the sector of chemical engineering within the Eighteen Nineties. The specified end in each cases was to create a comprehensive, integrated, scalable, rigorous, and practical curriculum to create a brand new workforce to deal with the nation’s and world’s biggest challenges.
