By Zachary Dubow

 

The Margalit Startup City Galil building in Kiryat Shemona was abuzz, its lobby filled with excited entrepreneurs, business operators, and startup leaders. And they all had one thing in common: they were all women.

 

Female entrepreneurs celebrate their achievements in the Galilee


The night’s event featured a GaliLadies meetup in honor of the International Day of Women (March 8) and Girls in Science. It was GaliLadies’ first event of 2023, a chance to recognize the Israeli female pioneers excelling in innovative fields like food tech, aggrotech, and health tech.

GaliLadies, a community for innovative women in Israel’s northern Galilee and Golan regions, recently celebrated the 1000th female entrepreneur in their network. The milestone is a testament to their growing influence and network and their continued push to provide women with tools for personal advancement, bringing their innovations to life in Israel and worldwide.

Women in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields are a focus across the developed world. Israel, the startup nation, is a leader in the STEM world, but much of her accomplishments have come from the nation’s central region, specifically Tel Aviv. The peripheral areas like the Galilee, just as women in STEM, need to be built up too, and its citizens need to be given the opportunities and the ecosystem to thrive.

Enter the Margalit Startup City Galil building — a jointly funded project of Jewish National Fund USA and JVP in Israel’s northernmost city Kiryat Shemona — and GaliLadies.

“This building is a meeting spot for community collaboration across the Galilee,” said Or Nadav Argov, the Community Manager for Margalit Startup City. “It’s a place where we can help realize men’s and women’s dreams, connecting them with like-minded people, finding them mentors, and advancing their careers. We also wanted to make this innovation center focus on serving innovative and ambitious women in the region, so we’re excited to be hosting the GaliLadies tonight.”

 

Female entrepreneurs in the Galilee celebrate their 1,000th member joining the organization GaliLadies

 

Characteristic of Israel’s entrepreneurship mentality, Margalit Startup City encourages people to work on their dreams young.

“We’re getting them started early, training young teenage entrepreneurs through school programs.”

In attendance at the GaliLadies meetup were high school students who discovered GaliLadies either from their parents or teachers who knew of these northern Israel initiatives and encouraged them to cultivate their ambition to make an impact.

Timna Gafni and Shaked Hainebach, 16 years old, came from QueenB, an educational-technological organization advancing women and teenage participation in STEM fields toward a brighter future. Timna, who enjoys studying programming, lives an hour north of Kiryat Shemona and dreams of making a difference in the world.

 

GaliLadies share their inspirational stories

 

Also in attendance was Yulia Kazrian, 17, who made aliyah from Ukraine with her family eight years ago. She found out about the program from her biotechnology teacher.

“My biggest dream is to be an actress. My other dream is working in something connected to medicine.”

Jewish National Fund USA’s goal is to see 300,000 people, both olim (new immigrants) and Israelis, move to northern Israel. Data sourced by the organization showed that in order to entice people to live in the region, they needed to invest in education, jobs, and healthcare. And they’re doing just that, including seed investments in local startups. And the Margalit building helps bring it all together.

Margalit is an initiative of JVP, one of Israel’s most successful venture capital firms. JVP’s non-profit arm created the Margalit concept to build centers of excellence in Israel’s overlooked regions, like Galilee.

“We started to make inroads here around six years ago, bringing people and assets together,” said Shimrit Kenig, a partner at JVP and the lead presenter at the GaliLadies meetup. “We launched this Margalit Startup Center, and it became a dynamic and vibrant place in the region, especially a focal point for local food tech and agritech startups.”

JVP runs an accelerator program out of the Margalit building. JVP realized the importance of establishing a cohesive community and started a small business group meeting monthly to receive mentorship and strategic support for their initiatives. After seeing how many Margalit participants were women, they created a group specifically for female entrepreneurs - the GaliLadies.

Shimrit discussed encouraging women to partake in and lead the hi-tech workforce.

“It’s part of JVP’s DNA. When startups show up at our offices without female representation in their leadership team, it’s a red flag.”

JVP stands out in women’s workforce participation, with women accounting for 74% of their staff and 50% of their partners. Most importantly, Shimrit pointed out, is female representation in their portfolio companies’ leadership, where women account for 40% of C-suite executives.

One of the companies represented at the event was BioBetter, whose mission is to pave the road for mass production of cultivated meat - not to be confused with plant-based meat. Dana Yarden, Co-Founder and Chief Business Officer of BioBetter, participated in the event’s panel discussion. BioBetter uses innovative methods to advance the cause, explicitly using tobacco plants for their favorable characteristics.

“We are a great example of the benefits of the ecosystem here. We started using the Margalit facilities when we had a small operation and needed to operate our lab at a meager cost. And then we received an investment from JVP.”

The event also featured showcases by Innovopro and Plantify, two food tech companies with tables set up with samples of their products, offering event participants a taste of the future. This reporter sampled the treats and confirmed that the future tastes delicious.

Learn more about Jewish National Fund-USA's Women for Israel at jnf.org/women.