Yong Li is the Lee Professor of Entrepreneurship at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He serves as research director of the Troesh Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and is co-editor-in-chief of Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, a Financial Times Top 50 journal. He was previously a visiting scholar at Stanford University.

Li is an internationally recognized scholar in entrepreneurship. His research examines how firms make strategic investment decisions under uncertainty in the contexts of venture capital, crowdfunding, innovation and international investment. His work suggests that an effective strategy to create value through funding entrepreneurial ventures requires not only picking better companies under conditions of information asymmetry, but also actively helping them manage risk and uncertainty.

Li's research is published extensively in leading strategy and entrepreneurship journals, supported by the Kauffman Foundation and SSHRC Canada, and honored by the Academy of Management and the Strategic Management Society. His work has reached audiences beyond academia through features in Forbes, Entrepreneur, and Knowledge@Wharton. He has been invited to give research talks at leading institutions around the world, including Stanford, Wharton, and Oxford.

Li is an accomplished educator and mentor. He has taught undergraduate, MBA and EMBA courses, received teaching excellence recognition from the University of Illinois, authored best-selling and award-winning case studies, and mentored more than 20 Ph.D. students. His students have raised over $2.5 million in external funding in the last decade, and earned top honors in major competitions, including first place at the New York State Business Plan Competition.

Li has played an instrumental role in building entrepreneurial ecosystems. As research director of the Troesh Center, he initiated one of the university’s first interdisciplinary research funding programs in 2020, with funded research proposals bringing more than $520,000 in external grants and leading to multiple top-tier publications by 2025. He also launched the Troesh Research Conference in 2022, now a premier platform for entrepreneurship research. He chaired the LEE Ph.D. Committee in 2022-2025, leading collaborative efforts across departments and disciplines to secure faculty support and develop curriculum to create the Ph.D. program in the business school. Earlier in his career, he launched campus-wide pitch and seed-funding programs, developed high-impact initiatives like the Entrepreneurship Lab (eLab), started a Ph.D. concentration, and fostered engagement with investor and startup communities. Across these efforts, he has secured over $450,000 in additional external funding to advance research and entrepreneurship initiatives.

Li brings his expertise to practice through service on boards of directors and advisory boards, through professional training including his work with the UNLV Brain Health Innovation Incubator, and through keynote speeches on topics ranging from venture capital and crowdfunding to artificial intelligence and technology commercialization.

Whether mentoring the next generation of entrepreneurs and business leaders, building programs from the ground up, or shaping the field as a journal editor, Li connects rigorous research to real entrepreneurial impact, raising the national and international visibility of the Lee Business School and UNLV.