In this episode, we sit down with Alex Choi (WG ’19, HKS ’19) to unpack his journey from the US Air Force to Wharton and Harvard Kennedy School – and ultimately to entrepreneurship. Alex shares how he built a standout narrative as a veteran applicant, the risk of leaving active duty before knowing he’d been admitted, and how his time at Wharton and HKS shaped his perspective on leadership, service, and career design. He reflects on the transition from the military to big tech, his roles at Instagram and Alchemy, and how those experiences led him to co-found YourNegotiations.com, a consulting company helping job seekers earn more by mastering salary negotiations. This episode is brought to you by Juno, the collective-bargaining platform that helps MBA students secure lower rates on student loans. Learn more at juno.us/m7a
I'm originally from Orange County, California, which is where I grew up for the most part. For undergrad, I went to the Air Force Academy in Colorado, and before business school I started my professional career on active duty in the Air Force. I was an acquisition officer, which is essentially working with defense companies to develop military software systems.
I like to joke that I had two extremely opposite experiences in the military. On one end, with acquisitions, I was working a typical desk job - I would go into a very corporate office, the only difference being that I would wear my camo uniform. But I also spent some time on the Air Force parachute team, where I was a military free-fall skydive instructor. I taught other military personnel the basic skydiving course and was also on the demonstration team. I traveled the country, jumped into air shows, jumped into stadiums before football games and sporting events, and essentially traveled around as the face of the Air Force.
While I was in the military, within the first two years of my active duty service, I started thinking about whether I was actually going to stay and pursue the full 20-year career or transition out into the private sector.
That's when I started to think about whether I should go to business school, whether I should apply and transition out, and how that would actually get me into a career transition.
I wanted to go to the Air Force Academy since I was in middle school. I first learned about it through my uncle in Korea, because he lived near a US military base and would see a lot of the fighter jets there. My original interest was to become a fighter pilot - I thought that was super cool. My father is a retired Korean Marine Corps officer, so I come from a military tradition. All through high school, I did everything I could to be prepared to apply to the Air Force Academy.
Then, senior year, as I was doing my medical exams, I found out that I'm color blind, which meant I couldn't actually fly. By then, though, I had learned so much about the Air Force, about going to the Academy, and about how many different career fields there are. I still really wanted to join the military and serve my country, and that didn't deter me at all. I wasn't devastated, because I knew there were many things I could do within the military. I still applied, and I'm very happy that I did. I absolutely loved and cherished my military experience.
So you found another way to fly?
Yeah - I found another way to fly, I guess.
Even throughout my time at the Air Force Academy and on active duty, I've always been very entrepreneurial. I always had different side hustles going on, looking for cool opportunities to try out different things, different products and projects. While I was in the military, I actually founded a startup on the side. It was a creator-brand collaboration service where I connected extreme sport athletes - I came from that world with skydiving - with retail brands that were looking to sponsor them. The brands would send their products to these athletes, the athletes would take really cool photos and videos, and they'd get these products for free. It was a value exchange, and the companies would end up with incredible content of their products being jumped out of an airplane or in the Swiss Alps with skiers. I did this in 2013, a few years into active duty, and it really scratched my entrepreneurial itch.
When I started approaching my five-year point of active duty - which is actually the minimum commitment for having gone to the Air Force Academy - that's the point at which many people start considering whether to leave the military or stay in. Two to three years out from that point, I really started evaluating my options. If I stayed in the military, this is what it would look like. If I left, it seemed like the best way to do that was to go to an MBA program, which could set me up very well to transition into a new career.
Within the military there's a cohort of people who tend to follow this path where they do their service, they may stay a little longer, but they apply to top programs and then fully transition into consulting or tech or finance and set themselves up for a great private sector career. When I was visiting a lot of these business schools I would connect with the veterans club, and some of those current students at the time - or even graduates - became my mentors. I'd share my application with them, they'd give me feedback, and it's just this long life cycle of military veterans who go to top MBAs and then go off into different industries. It's a very tight community and I'm very thankful that I had access to it.
My approach was: how do I actually further distinguish myself from just the other military applicants, when I'm not special forces, when I'm not a fighter pilot, when I wasn't a SEAL or anything like that?
Military veterans who often have the best shot at getting into a top MBA program either have very exciting war stories - like special forces or a fighter pilot - and just have extremely unique stories. I did have the skydiving experience and I did reference some of that, but a lot of my military experience was also working on the business side of the Air Force directly with defense contractors and aerospace companies. I thought that was actually an opportunity to really show how having worked with those companies gave me an insight into how the private sector works.
There were three aspects I really highlighted. The first was entrepreneurship - I talked about that startup I had founded. The other two were leadership and commitment to service and volunteer work.
On the leadership side, while I was in the military I was involved in leadership conferences that happen around the world. These were taught by top professors. I knew some of the people involved in putting those conferences on because they had run an experimental course when I was at the Air Force Academy, so I stayed in touch and found opportunities to go to other countries and do that work. My best friend from the Air Force Academy was an international cadet from Kenya, and we actually did some work in Africa - we went to Kenya and worked in the slums, brought our leadership training, taught and held workshops there, and helped start some very grassroots businesses.
That was the heart of my commitment to service and volunteer work. I also consulted for some small businesses in Cambodia - I had visited there on vacation, connected through family friends, and contributed in that way.
The goal was to make myself stand out from other military veterans by highlighting leadership, entrepreneurship, and commitment to service, and I really tried to tie all of that into a cohesive story.
All of it was very true. These were things that I had a genuine interest in and actually how I spent my time outside of my day job for many years. So it really lined up in such a way where it was easy - it took a long time for me to figure that out, put it into a cohesive narrative that would fit in an MBA application essay and being able to speak to it in interviews. But once I really nailed down the nuts and bolts of this story, I realized that this is actually a very powerful narrative that could resonate with an MBA admissions committee.
Building that cohesive narrative took many months. The way I explain it now probably sounds like, "Oh, wow, that makes so much sense," but putting all those pieces together actually took a very long time. I was also wondering if I should really lean into the skydiving aspect, where I taught other military members. I did reference that - it wasn't a huge focus, though, because I realized that when you apply to an MBA program, it's not just about the school but also what you're going to do for the rest of your career. It felt like it would resonate a lot more to focus on what really matters beyond the two years of the MBA - my past experience working with defense companies and consulting to small businesses abroad. All of that actually ties into what I would do for the long term, even after leaving the military.
From a tactical perspective, a big challenge was sequencing out how I was going to apply. Getting the GMAT out of the way first, then deciding how many months to devote to writing the essays - I had to be very strict and regimented with my schedule. I planned a whole year out: which months were devoted to the GMAT, which months to narrative building, and then the application itself.
I also had an extra logistical challenge: I had to decide whether I was going to get out of the military and tell them before I even submitted my applications. It was definitely a risky move, but I felt a lot of conviction that I was going to leave. I loved my time, but I was going to transition out. Once you give the military the heads up, you get deprioritized in terms of the best next assignments and leadership helping you with your career development. Not to say that I was cast out - the military doesn't do that - but it definitely added stress that I had to make that decision before I even knew if I was getting in anywhere.
My thinking was: if I'm going to fully transition out of the military and actually just leave everything I've known up to this point since starting college, I only want to do it if it's worth it for me. My calculus was getting into a top MBA program. There are many strong business schools, but I was really just targeting the top programs. The fact that I had to tell the military even before I submitted applications made it very real for me, and I think that was a huge motivator - I walked through a one-way door and there was no turning back.
I applied to Wharton, HBS, MIT Sloan, Tuck, and Harvard Kennedy School. I did all round one since I knew at least a year in advance that I was applying, so I made sure to do all that work ahead of time. It was definitely a grind applying to five schools all in the same round.
I actually did work with an admissions consultant, but just for two or three of the schools that I applied to, and then I figured I would be able to apply those learnings to the rest of the applications, which is what I did.
My decision for using a consultant was, once again, I've fully taken the leap. I've already jumped off the cliff in terms of telling the military I'm leaving. I am not going to waste any opportunity to increase my chances of getting in, because I'm just putting all my cards on this. So for me it made sense, and I thought it was very helpful. It's a personal decision for everybody. It's definitely possible to rely on alumni networks, other veteran graduates, but for me personally, it made a lot of sense and I'm glad I did it.
I did everything as a progression. I didn't want to be thinking about the GMAT while working on the applications. Since I knew I was going to apply at least a year in advance, I dedicated the first several months of that prep just towards the GMAT. I didn't even think about the schools or anything. My singular goal there was just to do well on the test. I took it twice. The second time I got a 710, which is a pretty strong score. But when you see the averages of these top schools, you feel like you can always do better.
The GMAT really is just to show that you can meet the bar, but it's not going to be the decision maker as to whether you get into these schools. It's so much more important - the story that you tell, why you want to go to that school, what you plan to do in the future. The narrative piece was really important, which is where most of my time actually went. The GMAT portion was probably just around four very concentrated months of studying and preparing for the exam.
Doing the dual degree with the Kennedy School - where there's a very big focus on public leadership and public service - and coupling that with an MBA would actually give me the most opportunity and options.
Having come from a background of public service, when I was applying to schools, even though I felt like I wanted to go into the private sector, I did still feel there was a chance I would want to do something related to public service. I didn't really know what that looked like, but just to give myself that option, it felt like the dual degree was the right path. I also genuinely had an interest in public service, politics, and doing consulting to small businesses in developing markets, and I felt like the Kennedy School really hit on that piece.
The dual degree is three years, so there is a real point about opportunity cost - an extra year where I'm not in the job market, an extra year of tuition cost, and a year of work experience. I did have some GI Bill that actually helped cover tuition, so that definitely helped factor into my decision. Even after I got into the Kennedy School, I was really thinking through whether it actually even made sense for me to do the dual degree. But after I visited the Kennedy School and understood the program, it just felt like such a valuable experience that in the long term, when I look back, I'll be very happy that I did.
The Kennedy School paired with an MBA program - where ultimately I went to Wharton - gave me two networks that actually have very little overlap. The value of the network of these schools is such a huge piece as to why it makes sense to go to these graduate programs, and I felt that for the long term I was really broadening my network potential, opportunities into other careers, different communities, different sectors. So that was also part of my decision-making process.
Absolutely - and I'm really glad I chose Wharton. It was just the perfect place for me. I'm really glad I made the decision to transition out of the military, went to a top program, and then into my career. I ultimately ended up getting into Tuck, Wharton, and MIT Sloan - all really great programs. When I went to the welcome weekends, Wharton resonated.
Wharton has one of the biggest classes among the top programs, up there with HBS. It seemed to me that Wharton did a very good job of having a super well-oiled machine - a very robust program around every aspect of the MBA experience: academics, recruiting, career placement, as well as MBA life, the social extracurriculars, interests, and so on. But there's also a lot of opportunity to choose your own adventure and really scale and divide up however you want to create your MBA experience. If you really want to focus on academics, you can make that 80% of your experience. If you really care about career transition and getting a great job, you can focus on that. There were other programs that have strengths in certain areas, but maybe that's just a singular focus of that school. For me, it seemed like there was a lot of flexibility with a lot of support no matter what direction I wanted to take my experience. I thought Wharton did that really, really well - and in hindsight, having gone through it, I think they really did.
My biggest focus was that career transition. Having left the military, I was very focused on recruiting for tech and getting into product or within the tech world. It really helped having decided that even before I started recruiting, because how you spend your time is just as important as what you're not spending your time on. I didn't spend any time going to coffee chats or anything in any other industry except tech. That's all I did, and it really helped me with my focus.
To be completely frank, academics weren't the most important thing for me - not that I didn't do all the work, but I went to the MBA program also to build my network. Having come from only a military background, I really wanted to broaden my connections to other industries. Wharton is also a very social and fun environment. I had an absolute blast participating in all the extracurriculars. I did the Leadership Venture Program, leading leadership programs in other countries, and many other affinity and interest events. It really rounded out my experience, and I miss being a Wharton student very much.
I was a product marketing MBA intern at Instagram, so I did get in and was able to break into tech. I returned to Instagram after as a PMM and worked there for about two years. I left Instagram and then did product marketing at a startup called Alchemy - they're a web three infrastructure company, hypergrowth Series C startup. I felt like I got both the big tech experience as well as working at very fast-paced startups.
I always had that entrepreneurial itch and was always looking for opportunities to try the founder thing. My wife Gerta worked previously at LinkedIn and Salary.com, did a very similar tech journey, and also worked in venture capital. She was exploring the founder journey as well. When I left my last job at Alchemy, we realized we should actually try founding something together. So we started a consulting company called YourNegotiations.com. We work with job seekers and help them negotiate their job offers and basically make more money.
Gerta, my wife, is the original negotiations expert - she's honestly the best negotiator I've ever met in my entire life. For many years she informally helped a lot of our friends increase their offers. Having worked in tech, we also knew that creating an online business around an expertise and selling a digital good - like a course or a digital service - presented a lot of opportunity. My brother-in-law, who's an HBS grad, had worked in this industry and showed both of us the opportunity. We already had the expertise part down, so we decided to test whether there was demand for this.
We started our business as an experiment. I was former Meta - former Instagram. At the time there were many layoffs, and I'm in a lot of ex-Meta alumni communities. Many people were applying to new jobs, and so I posted there. I said, "Hey, it seems like people are applying to jobs. Lots of questions being asked around negotiations here. My wife Garrett is a negotiations expert. If there's interest, we're happy to do a free 30-minute Q&A - anyone can dial in." Within 24 hours there were hundreds of people who commented and reacted to it, asking us when it is. So we held this a week later, and actually out of that session there were a few people who followed up and said, "Hey, I'm going through a live negotiation - I could really use some coaching. Can I hire you to just tell me what to do and say?" And that's essentially how our business was born.
I did take some entrepreneurship courses at Wharton, and also when I was at the Kennedy School, I was very involved with Harvard Innovation Labs. I was working on a startup there with some of my classmates. That experience really taught me the importance of testing an idea to see if there's actually an opportunity or a market there, and then if you're able to validate that, then really investing - versus investing a lot of resources and time up front building what you think is the right thing, and then you put it out there and maybe no one ends up using it and all that time was wasted. A lot of the courses I took at Wharton really instilled in me a different model of approaching things - that lean startup process where you test, you experiment, you learn, and then you adjust and continue to grow from there. So that was very helpful.
Some of our clients have been Wharton classmates - they've pinged us and we've worked with them. We primarily work with a lot of people in tech, finance, and consulting, many of the typical Wharton career trajectories. Having gone to Wharton and having that MBA network is actually where a lot of people learn about us, and we now get a majority of our business through referrals. Even if people I know don't necessarily need our support, we very often get a lot of people referring us to their friends or their former co-workers as they're applying for new jobs.
We are bootstrapped. We don't have any investors. It's just Gerta and me. We do have a small team - a part-time assistant and a fractional chief of staff, but this chief of staff also has her own entire team of video editors, copywriters, and social media managers who we have access to. Our team is all part-time.
It's funny because when I thought about entrepreneurship in the early days - from when I was in the military and even after Instagram, when I was thinking about what kind of founder path I should pursue living in San Francisco - you're often sold this narrative that the only way to succeed as a founder is to go the tech-enabled, VC-backed route where you need to raise millions of dollars and build some sort of app. That's definitely a potentially lucrative and very appealing path, but there are also a lot of trade-offs. You're going to be working very, very intensely - it'll perhaps impact your health. In many cases, you can end up raising millions and not build a product that gets market adoption, and then you're on the hook with investor money. That's a very viable path and I fully respect it.
But once I really started thinking about how I wanted my founder path to be, I realized that at this point in my life, I really care about autonomy and actually having full control over my life. Gerta and I work very intensely on our business, but the fact that we fully work for ourselves and are in full control - not just of the business decisions, but of our every workday as well - just having that control is the best part of this job.
Honestly, I really hope that this is the endgame - that Garrett and I just continue building this business and we scale it. It's been super rewarding to be doing this kind of work because we really help job seekers. We've actually been approached by companies to help them recruit against candidates. We've also even been approached about a potential acqui-hire for us to work with a company in the HR space and fully take over the negotiations aspect. But we just love how rewarding it is to actually help job seekers. On average, we've increased people's offers by $90K on top of the initial offer. In many cases, we've increased by six figures - just helping people earn a lot more money, actually seeing their value and their worth. We even had a client who said, "Because of all the extra money that I was able to negotiate, I feel safe having another child." When they said that, we were just like, "Oh my gosh." The impact that we have in actually helping people in this way has been one of the best parts of this business. Long term, I hope that this is just what Garrett and I continue to do - we build this business and keep helping people earn more money.
You can learn about us through our company name, YourNegotiations.com. Garrett and I also just started a YouTube channel and podcast where we put out weekly episodes where we talk about negotiations. We also chitchat about our lives in San Francisco. And we have a weekly email newsletter. All of that can be found on the website. We also post every day on LinkedIn - lots of free negotiations content, tips, tactics, and strategies.
Really think about whether an MBA will help you achieve your future goals. I've met a lot of people - even within my program or people who are thinking about MBAs - whose reason for wanting to go is that they think it's just what you do next. You really have to think about the opportunity cost. In an MBA program, being out of the workforce for two years, not having full-time compensation for two years - you need to include that in your calculus. It's not just the tuition cost. You have to think about what trade-off you're making. It absolutely better be worth whatever your future plans are. Don't just go because it seems like what everyone around your age or your peers or at your company are doing.
There were some cases where people asked me, "Should I apply or not?" And hearing through their reasoning, my advice was, "I don't think you should apply to an MBA program. I think you should stay in your career. You're doing really well, there are opportunities to grow in that way. Maybe you could revisit an MBA - doing an executive MBA later on in your career - but I actually don't think it's the right choice for you." Not that they can't cut it or can't get in, but it's so important that you be able to explain to yourself whether it's actually tied to what you care about and where you want to take your career and your life.