Dr. Yossi Maaravi is in charge of the major in Entre​preneurial Management, the head of the B.A. program in Entrepreneurship, the academic director of the CO-OP Startup Experience course, the head of the LEUMI Center for Innovation and the director of IDC IMPACT. Yossi obtained his B.A. from the "Amirim" honors program at the Hebrew University. He completed his PhD. in Business in the direct program for excellent students at Tel Aviv University. Yossi's research focuses on decision-making, negotiation and creativity. Dr. Maaravi has vast field experience both as an entre​preneur and as a management consultant. He has more than 20 years of experience in teaching and training young adults, students and managers from Israel, US, Singapore, Germany and China. He is also the author of two children's books and a book on negotiation. 

Dr. Gail Gilboa Freedman

 

Nava Swersky Sofer is Managing Director of IDC Beyond, IDC Herzliya's new Presidential Programme designed to empower participants to develop and launch innovative ventures that apply exponential tec​hnologies to help solve 21st century global challenges. She brings over 25 years of international experience as an entrepreneur, venture capitalist, senior executive, innovation​ & technology commercialization expert living and working in three continents and is a frequently-invited speaker in leading international forums.

​The Project Manager of the program is Mr. Gil Karie, former deputy editor-in-chief of Forbes magazine in Israel. Gil participated in various large scale conference activities and gained over the years a deep knowledge of the field and the people lea​ding it. Gil holds a B.A in communication and film from Tel Aviv University.

Dr. Barak Ben-Avinoam is a Partner at Benhamou Global Ventures (BGV), a Silicon Valley-based early stage venture capital fund that focuses on enterprise IT innovation. Barak is an expert in the field of early-stage investments, accelerators and incubators. Barak h​olds a Doctorate of Business Administration, with honors, from the International School of Management, Paris, France, and a B.Sc. in Information Systems, with honors, from Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA.

Dr. Orly Idan teaches psycholinguistics; language, emotion and conflict; and academic research and writing at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya and is a senior associate researcher at the Psychology of Intergroup Conflict and Reconciliation Lab at the Baruch Ivcher School of Psychology at IDC Herzliya, and at the Martin Springer Center for Conflict Studies at Ben Gurion University. Her current research interests are the effect of linguistic cues on inducing and regulating emotions within the context of intractable conflicts; discourse analysis of Israeli students' encounters with narratives of the other; mentalization and language development; resilience sources; and, salutogenic interventions in conflictual settings. She was a postdoctoral associate at the Salutogenic Research Center and the Conflict Management Program at Ben Gurion University of the Negev, focusing on a sense of coherence-based assessment aimed at evaluating an acute psychiatric in-patient unit's needs and development of an intervention program. Her PhD dissertation from Tel Aviv University focused on resilience sources, socio-emotional self-perceptions, family climate and hopeful thinking among students (advisor: Prof. Malka Margalit). She completed her M.A degree in psycholinguistics (advisors: Prof. Avner Ziv and Prof. Elite Olshtein) at Tel Aviv University. 

Dr. Jacob Greenshpan has a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology and user interface design. Building innovative, top-of-the-line UX solutions and applications has been his passion for the last 20+ years. Before becoming an independent consultant, he cofounded two companies: UI Ltd. (which is the largest company in Israel for UX design) and Applied Cognitive Engineering, Ltd​. (ACE) for cognitive training. In addition to working as strategic UX consultant, Jacob coordinates the UX activity for Google’s Launchpad program, an acceleration program for startups. He has  created UX expert communities for helping startups in Berlin, Paris, Barcelona, Bangalore, Rio de Janeiro, Jakarta, Mexico City and many more places. He had the honor of meeting over 700 startups around the world and helping them turn their dreams into reality.

Daniel Pomerantz worked for 12 years as a transactional lawyer in New York and Chicago, before making aliya to Israel. Daniel has run several entrepreneurial ventures throughout his career, including the Israeli edition of Playboy Magazine. Currently he develops content and long term strategies with the media monitorin​g group, HonestReporting. Daniel is a graduate of Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, DC.

Liraz Sharabani holds a BA in Business Management, majoring in entrepreneurship at the "Zell Entrepreneurship program". Liraz started working at IDC and gained significant experience in developing educational programs focusing on entrepreneurshipCurrently, she manages the curriculum development and teach in several venture creation programs such as: MEET Program, AppleSeeds and Heseg Foundation. In addition Liraz is part of the Adelson School of Entrepreneurship faculty at IDC Herzliya, where she teach at the WashU Program, Sustainability School and the Government School.

Yair Finzi is the CEO of SecuredTouch, a startup that connects Cyber Security, FinTech and Data Science in order to research and analyze how people interact with mobile devices. For the past 12 years, Yair has been leading hardware, software and system engineering groups, with a strong focus on Cyber Security & Fraud Prevention products. Prior to founding SecuredTouch, Yair served as Head of Cyber Security Department at the Israeli Ministry of Defense.Yair holds B.Sc. in Electronics Engineering and MBA major in Strategy and  Entrepreneurship (magna cum laude), both from Tel-Aviv University.

I was born and raised in London before joining the IDF and making Aliyah. After my service, I studied Government & Politics in t​he IDC and (most importantly) adopted my dog Mufasa from a local shelter in Herzliya. During my studies I gained experience in biz dev and marketing at 90mins as well as being the IDC international ambassador in London. Since graduating in 2014, Mufasa & I founded DOGIZ to help urban dog owners connect with the best service providers in their neighbourhood. I currently split my time between London & Tel Aviv and am looking to give back to the next generation of IDC entrepreneurs.

Oren is​ a visionary entrepreneur who fuses his background in business & product management with his passion for making a meaningful impact in the world. He is the founder of Treat, a digital health company that helps therapists and families of children with special needs. Prior, he was CEO of a fin-tech startup (serving US, UK and Brazil) which he led to M&A; and an engagement leader at the consulting firm Shaldor. Oren gives back to the startup community as a mentor at the 8200 Social Program, MindCET and EISP accelerators and the IDC School of Entrepreneurship. He has an LLB and MBA from Hebrew University; he is married, father of 2 and used to be a professional swimmer.

Gavin Suss was born in South Africa, ​​and immigrated to Israel with his family at the age of 9. He has a Ph.D. in 

Education and Management from Tel Aviv University and he graduated the executive managers program at Harvard Business School. He is an expert in innovation and creativity and lectures al around the globe. For years he served as the academic director at the acclaimed Design and Engineering College Shenkar. He was elected as executive director of the High Committee of Public Colleges in 2006, and served as a Director of the Central Archive for the History of the Jewish People. For the past decade he is VP Corporate at Keter Plastic and a board member at the Infinity investment group.

She worked as a risk management consultant contracted by companies such as Novantas. Prior to which she worked as a programmer at SAP. Nilli revamped marketing strategy at Fundacion IRES helping women and children in domestic violence situations. Nilli is also part of the leading team at Elevation W, a women entrepreneurship program. She studied math and computer science at Tel Aviv University, and did an MBA in IESE Barcelona. Born and raised in Tel Aviv, Nilli recently moved back to Israel with her two shining kids and husband, after spending 5.5 years in Barcelona. She is extremely passionate about empowering women, and in general wants all creatures to be happy and free.

Nadav Eyal is the Co-founder & CEO at Eybna Technologies. Eybna is a global leader in the research and development of Cannabis terpene based solutions, with the mission of bringing the benefits of Cannabis to more patients, by isolating the medicinal properties found in different strains and providing cannabis medicine that is tailored to treat specific medical conditions.

Gil Dotan is the CEO and Co-founder of "Guardian Optical Technologies", a disruptive Automotive sensing technology company. He previously co-founded Passion-Ant - a P2P service platform that monetized content websites. In the past, he served in various business and entrepreneurial rolls in different companies doing marketing, sales, channel management and product management. Gil hold a BSc in mechanical engineering from Tel-Aviv University.

Natasha Shine-Zirkel was born in London, raised in California and made Aliyah at the age of 19. She has an Associate’s Degree ​in Business Administration with an emphasis in Business Management from Irvine Valley College and a Bachelor’s Degree with a major in Marketing and a minor in Finance from The IDC Herzliya. Natasha worked as the Program Coordinator of the Zell Entrepreneurship Program at The IDC Herzliya and then took the role of Compliance Coordinator at SafeCharge, prior to her joining the Rounds team in 2009 as the 9th employee. As part of her current role as Rounds’ CMO, Natasha is responsible for all of the marketing and business development efforts of the company as well as working with Rounds CEO on all the business on-goings. In her free time, Natasha likes to help start-ups and does so by mentoring at Google Campus Launch Pad, Campus for Moms, Up West Labs, The Junction, Siftach, IDC and The Zell Entrepreneurship Program. Natasha also guest lectures on Mobile Marketing at many academic venues.

After 4 years as a soldier and commander at Shaldag - IDF's airforce commando unit, Roy started studying at IDC and now holds a BA in Computer Science. While studying, he founded the first nation-wide student Hackathon at IDC. On his third year of studying he joined the Zell Entrepreneurship program. On the the Zell program he founded Mego and now acts as company's CEO. Mego raised seed round from Uri Levine and the Zell fund.

After immigrating from Germany to Israel, Daniel studied Computer Science and Entrepreneurship at the IDC's Zell program, shaped a gaming startup from its early days to successful exit and beyond, married his dream girl, is father to four children, enjoys reading books, mountain biking, surfing and now has his hands full raising a new venture. Daniel is the CEO of ScholarshipOwl.com, a unique venture helping US based students discover scholarships and apply to thousands of scholarships, automatically. Before ScholarshipOwl, Daniel navigated the entire company development cycle from establishing a start-up, selling it to the market leader, integrating it and subsequently delivering strong financial results within an international publicly traded enterprise. Daniel gathered hands on leadership experience creating a hyper-growth start-up, M&A, leading through a merger, managing small teams of 2 and leading international organizations of 250 employees across diverse cultural and professional backgrounds.

Liat is  the Co-Founder at 24me, she aims to revolutionize the way pe​ople manage their day to day life. Liat holds a B.A. in Computer​ Science from IDC Herzeliya, and an EMBA from St. Louis University in the U.S. She was named by Forbes magazine as one of the 10 female founders to watch out of Israel, and was selected as one of the top 100 female entrepreneurs in Europe.​