Joseph Choi, MBA 21 – From Navy Seals to Amazon Ads

Nov 16 2023 • 37 mins

It’s Veterans Month, and this episode of OneHaas welcomes a special guest and a special guest host. Last month’s guest, Cassandra Salcedo, MBA ‘21, speaks with her former classmate and military veteran Joseph Choi, an account executive at Amazon Ads.

As the son of a Korean military vet, Joseph grew up always wanting to go into the service. After attending the Naval Academy, he landed one of the few and coveted spots with the Navy Seals and spent nine years in the service before enrolling at the Haas School of Business.

He and Cassandra discuss his parents’ journey to America from Korea, the intensive training he went through with the Seals, lessons he brought from the military to business school, and his current role at Amazon.

*OneHaas Alumni Podcast is a production of Haas School of Business and is produced by University FM.*

Episode Quotes:

Common misconceptions people have about military service members

“One big misconception is that those who decide to join the military are very close minded, narrow minded, and not very intelligent people…Or sometimes that it’s troublemakers who decided to join the military.”

What inspired him to go to business school

“I'm going to be real honest here. A lot of military folks when they get out of the military have no idea what they want to do. And I was one of them. I had no idea what I wanted to do. However, thankfully, because of a lot of those ahead of me who got out were great mentors in this sense where a lot of them do go to business school. So it's not uncommon to see a lot of military folks go to business school.”

His advice to prospective business school students

“I think what's more important is, you know, instead of taking that depth and trying to dive into academics, use that time to get to know your classmates, to try new things, expand your reach, do things that you wouldn't have done normally because I think it's also a safe time to take risks.”

Insights he’s taken from the military and business school into his current job at Amazon Ads

“The job in itself is usually quite simple in comparison to people. People are the hardest. Human relations are the hardest thing to work with, to navigate around and deal with. And I think that is something across the board that I've seen consistent. In the military, with my last role, with the current role, is that in anything and everything, humans are the most complicated, and hence that's why communication is so important, having empathy is so important.”