Rui (Tianrui) Li

Yale School of Management

“Adventurer by heart, pathfinder by trade.”

Hometown: Beijing, China

Fun fact about yourself:  I produced a 137km adventure race that involved mountain-biking down the Great Wall of China. Before all that, I used to fail PE in high school, but now I ski, sail, kiteboard, scuba-dive, and paraglide. I’ve run marathons, ski-mountaineered a 5100m peak and crossed a desert on foot.

Undergraduate School and Degree: University of Wisconsin-Madison. Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and Scandinavian Studies, with a Certificate in Business.

Where was the last place you worked before enrolling in business school? The Faction Collective. Founder of China Office, China Marketing Manager.

Where did you intern during the summer of 2024? DICOM Director. New Haven, CT.

Where will you be working after graduation? Co-founder of AIMIGO. Actively recruiting for full-time.

Co-Chair, Yale SOM 2025 Responsible AI in Global Business Conference: I oversee partnerships, marketing and media relations with our conference co-hosts the Yale SOM Program on Stakeholder Innovation and Mangement and the Data & Trust Alliance. By convening voices from Big Tech, enterprise, policymakers, civil society and academia, this multidisciplinary conference creates a foundation for partnerships & strategies to unlock AI’s value, responsibly. Some of the speakers include John Maeda (VP, Engineering, Head of Computational Design / AI Platform, Microsoft), Alan Murray (President, WSJ Leadership Institute), Rob Thomas (SVP Software & Chief Commercial Officer, IBM), Jim Swanson (CIO, Johnson & Johnson).

VP of Partnerships, Yale SOM AI Association: We hosted trailblazers in different fields of AI, including Big Tech, Healthcare and Law and for other emerging technologies including Quantum 101 with Florian Carle from the Yale Quantum Institute.

Co-Chair, Greater China Club: We hosted cultural celebrations, alumni mixers and career panels to foster connections between the Greater China community and the broader Yale community including an event with Jordan Schneider, host of The ChinaTalk podcast and Karman Lucero, research fellow at the Paul Tsai China Center for students across SOM from the AI Association and Tech & Society clubs to discuss DeepSeek’s strategy and impact.

Research Associate, Program on Stakeholder Innovation and Management (Y-SIM) for Professor Jon Iwata with a focus on AI and Social License to Operate .

2024 Quantum!Up Challenge – Winning Team: I led a multidisciplinary team of Yale students who won the inaugural Quantum UP! Challenge – Quantum Disruption discipline, a first-of-its-kind effort by QuantumCT to engage students interested in charting a path for the quantum economy.

Finalist, Startup Yale 2025 – April 2025: as co-founder of AIMIGO, we will be pitching at Startup Yale for the Miller Prize.

Teaching Assistant: State & Society (Core), Customer (Core), Executive (Core), International Experience: China

Yale SOM Student Government, Community Service Chair (Year 1)

Global MBA Regatta 2024, Piraeus, Greece – Winner of Division B

Which academic or extracurricular achievement are you most proud of during business school? I was particularly proud of my team when we won the Quantum!Up Challenge – Quantum Disruption, where we investigated applications for quantum technology in the finance and insurance sectors and created a roadmap for companies to adopt quantum computing. I have always believed that diverse teams perform better, and this experience confirmed that. We had two Computational Chemistry PhDs, two undergraduate students majoring in Economics and Computer Science, and an MBA – exactly the kind of interdisciplinary collaboration you’d want to bridge emerging technology with industry applications!

What achievement are you most proud of in your professional career? It was bringing Swiss ski brand Faction to China and growing the company to be one of the market leaders in China, in 3 years, through COVID. The experience taught me perseverance and resilience, and that entrepreneurship is not just about having a big plan, it’s about seeing it through no matter what comes your way.

Why did you choose this business school? Yale has a long history of connections with China, and many notable Chinese alumni have made significant contributions in politics, business, academia, and culture. I wanted the secret sauce!

Who was your favorite MBA professor? Tough one! Gotta pick Professor Mushfiq Mobarak this time. How cool is it to be an Economist, Yale Professor, and Advisor for your home country’s Interim Government after they’ve overthrown their corrupt predecessors!? (Yes, the country is Bangladesh.) This man’s wisdom and wit have no boundaries, and I’m lucky to have sat in his class and TA’d for him!

What was your favorite course as an MBA? State & Society. It’s an MBA core course that might be unique to SOM. We explored topics from the forces behind the end of Apartheid to the factors that cause gender wage gap. This course enabled me to think about business in the societal context and inspired me to explore more important topics of today. My interest in responsible AI and bridging the gap between emerging technology and society all came from this course!

What was your favorite MBA event or tradition at your business school? All the cultural celebrations! I’ve organized celebrations for the Spring Festival and Lantern Festival and learned how to dance for Diwali! Because of how diverse our student body is, there are festivities almost all year round. Why only celebrate your own holiday when you can celebrate everybody’s?

Looking back over your MBA experience, what is the one thing you’d do differently and why? I wouldn’t change a thing. Of course, not everything was perfect, but that’s the beauty of it. I learned, grew, and became better because of the imperfections. As an entrepreneur, “trial and error” is the way I do things. During my first year, I focused on structured recruiting, which did not turn out exactly as I expected, but did help me reflect on my core beliefs and find my own “product-market fit.” That is where my deep dive into quantum science and AI began, which has opened doors to exciting opportunities and created a pathway where I can drive impacts and progress.

What is the biggest myth about your school? SOM’s alumni network is not strong. I’ve personally connected with amazing alumni who are trailblazers in their own regards, and they were very generous with sharing their experience, insights, and resources with me. I’ve learned so much from SOM alums!

What did you love most about your business school’s town? I love going up East Rock Park to see the sunset. It was 10 minutes away from where I lived, and the trail hike is 25 minutes to the top where you can see all of New Haven! The flowers in the spring, fireflies in the summer, golden leaves in the fall, and snow in the winter were beautiful and relaxing. There was never a dull moment. I got familiar with the deer family living there too! They come out more often when there are fewer people.

What movie or television show (e.g., The Big Short, The Founder, Mad Men, House of Lies) best reflects the realities of business and what did you learn from it? Game of Thrones. “Chaos is a ladder – Little Finger” is absolutely true. Exploration, experiment, and growth all happen the fastest before rules are established. But one must be careful not to lose integrity!

What is one way that your business school has integrated AI into your programming? What insights did you gain from using AI? Yale has done a lot! We have locally hosted GPT-4o and Claude 3.5 Sonnet. There are many AI-focused classes, and many classes allow the use of AI.  As a student leader of SOM’s AI Association, I also personally programmed some events, like the 2025 Responsible AI in Global Business Conference. I came in with zero coding experience, and with Professor Kyle Jensen’s Management of Software Development and Professor Tauhid Zaman’s Generative AI and Social Media courses, I’m able to co-found an AI-focused startup that got accepted into Booth’s New Venture Challenge and Startup Yale. AI is going to change everything – and I want to help people get ready!

Which MBA classmate do you most admire? Nick Callegari. He has all the elements lined up to be a responsible and successful entrepreneur. Integrity, resilience, perseverance, a good brain, and a great attitude no matter what comes his way. He’s currently building his own venture, VeruStruct, aiming to solve the affordable housing problem by inventing a new way to 3D print houses. Stay tuned, something amazing is brewing!

What are the top two items on your professional bucket list? Accumulate enough wealth first to sustain myself and then to fundamentally change the world for the better.

What made Rui such an invaluable addition to the Class of 2025?

“I am delighted to provide an enthusiastic commendation for Rui Li. She is a second-year MBA student at Yale School of Management with both the academic capabilities and intangible qualities that stand out.

Rui has a strong understanding of the global forces that need to be considered in making the right policy, business model and strategy decisions and a particularly keen insight on the ethical guardrails required for the AI era.

In the classroom she is informed, prepared and persuasive. Outside the classroom, she has the kind of ideas her classmates get behind and the ability to build partnerships and teams that attract an impressive range of industry leaders and policy makers to campus.

All of that said, she is equally committed to leading and participating in a vast range of the cultural and community celebrations that make the SOM community particularly special.”

Anjani Jain
Deputy Dean, Academic Programs
Professor in the Practice of Management
Yale School of Management

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