Faculty

Program Leadership

	Liat Aaronson is the acting executive director and the chairperson of the program. Today, she is also a co-founder and CSO at Horizen Labs, a blockchain technology company. Before that, she was the COO of Selina, a high growth start-up in the hospitality space. Before that, she was a Partner at Marker LLC, a leading Israel-New York based venture capital firm, where she continues to oversee their follow-on annex fund. She holds a B.A. in economics (cum laude) from the University of California at Berkeley, an LL.B. and an MBA from Tel Aviv University, and an LL.M. from the University of Leiden in the Netherlands (cum laude). She attained practical experience in M&A at Naschitz, Brandes, Amir & Co. Liat is a board member at Wristcam and at the Infinity Investment Group. She is a member of the Friends of IDC’s advisory board and on the advisory boards of: WiSe, Weizman Institute’s entrepreneurship program and Scola, the 81 Unit entrepreneurship program.
	Ori Schnitzer is the Executive Director of the program, and a Zell program graduate himself. For over 15 years, he has been working with and for startups, as a founder, executive and advisor, covering a broad range of sectors and geographies. Until 2020 he was based in East Asia, where he launched operations for Israeli and American companies, mainly in the fields of energy management and environmental services. Since returning to Israel he has been helping emerging and growth-stage companies to assess, plan for and execute international expansion strategies, as a consultant. Ori holds a B.A. in Business Administration from Reichman University (Cum Laude), and an MBA from CEIBS - China Europe International Business School (Cum Laude).
	Liraz Sharabani is the program's personal development director, a Zell 7 graduate herself, and active at the Zell alumni board in the last ten years. Liraz is a seasoned professional with varied experience in the Israeli innovation ecosystem across multiple sectors. Before that, she was the Head of Academy at Shookit. In 2014 she founded Boost, a venture creation development and consulting firm. Liraz's expertise lies in developing entrepreneurial programs and translating customer's needs into a strategic vision and operating structure. During five years with Boost, she developed and managed over 30 venture creation programs in Israel and abroad, collaborating with the Zell network and the Israeli startups' ecosystem. Liraz holds an EMBA from The Hebrew University with practical experience in "Startup Investing" and a B.A. from Reichman University.
	Dr. Amir Kfir is an international change leader and corporate organizational therapist, regularly active in more than 20 countries. He has run many organizational change processes dedicated to transforming culture and organizational positioning towards the future. Amir has also run many forum training programs, management retreats and team building seminars. Amir is the creator of the Nonflict Conflict Resolution methodology facilitating conflict resolution forums for YPO and WPO as well as for corporations all over the world.
	Dr. Eyal Maoz is the Director of the MBA programs at the School of Business at Ono Academic College. He has a Ph.D. in Marketing from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in Chicago, and both a B.A. and MBA from Tel Aviv University. Eyal is also a Visiting Assistant Professor of Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.
	Ms. Karin Levi is an expert product marketer and an entrepreneur. Over the last 5.5 years, she led the global developer marketing for Firebase and for the computer vision team at Google (based in SF and NY). Before that, she was a growth hacker in a few startups and founded a micro social network startup. She co-teaches the New Media Entrepreneurship course at the Zell program at Reichman University and is an alumnus of the program herself.
	Dr. Ayal Shenhav, Adv. is the Founder and Senior Partner at Shenhav & Co., Law Offices, a leading Tel Aviv law firm that deals with high-tech, private equity, taxation and project finance. Ayal has earned both a Doctorate of Juridical Science (JSD) and an LL.M. in Taxation from the New York University School of Law, and an LL.B. (magna cum laude) from Tel Aviv University. For several years, he practiced law at Davis Polk and Wardwell LLP in New York. Dr. Shenhav also served as Vice Dean of the Radzyner School of Law at Reichman University.
	Mr. Eden Shochat is an equal partner at Aleph, a +$300 million venture capital fund focused on serving Israeli entrepreneurs who want to build big, scalable, global businesses. Prior to founding Aleph, Eden was a general partner at Genesis where he focused on seed-stage investments and was a co-founder face.com, the world leader in massive, web-scale face recognition in social networks, acquired by Facebook. He also co-founded and was the CTO of Aternity, recently acquired by Riverbed. Entrepreneurship is a passion for Eden, who is among the organizers of the annual Geekcon geeks conference and who started The Junction that was voted as the #1 startup program in Israel.
	Ms. Abigail Tenembaum and Mr. Michael Weitz Work with individuals and groups worldwide to help foster and grow their communications and leadership capabilities. They are also the official trainers for speakers and senior curators for the world renowned TED Conferences. Abigail holds an MBA from Columbia Business School in New York and worked as a Strategy Consultant for Bain and Company.
	Mr. Michael Weitz spent 10 years in the theatre business as a Director and Producer of national tours – on, off, and far off Broadway.
	Lorraine Tuffias Keynote speaker and Management consultant. Recently retired CEO of Holmes Place Israel, For the past 20 years, she has been a pioneer and innovator, changing the face of the health and fitness industry in Israel.
	Yoav Artzi is a Zell Entrepreneur (Zellot) in Residence, a Zell 12 graduate himself. Yoav is the VP product of Adeptmind, an AI company in the e-commerce industry. He holds a B.A. in Communications from the Reichman University. Yoav has more than 10 years of experience in the field of product creation, design, user experience and business. His work and passion is diverse; Yoav worked with over than 100 companies worldwide, consulted and mentored young entrepreneurs and took part in two major accelerators: Techstars London and Masschallenge Boston.
	Yoni Cheifetz is a partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners (www.lsvp.com) since 2006. LSVP is one of the world's leading global VCs with over $10B under management and a mission to serve the world's most extraordinary entrepreneurs who are building tomorrow's companies today. Prior to LSVP Yoni was a partner at Star Ventures for 3 years. Yoni's investments include: Solaredge (Nasdq: SEDG), Outbrain, Cato Networks, Bluevine, Personetics, At-Bay, Alooma (AQcq. by Google), Epsagon, Teads (acq. by Altis), Theranica, Sheer Networks (acq. by Cisco), AeroScout (acq. by Stanley) and others. Before becoming a VC, Yoni spent 16 years as an entrepreneur and angel investor founding, managing and investing in several software companies including: Demantra (acq. by Oracle), Agentics (acq. by Mercado), Earnix and Traiana (acq. by ICAP).
	Mr. Hillik Nissani is a trusted advisor and advisory/board member, helping co-founders and CxOs from some of the best startups in Israel to build great companies through management consulting and executive mentoring (including to some IDC and Zell program graduates). Hillik has a strong operational background - he was CEO (CubeEffect, now Matomy Media), COO (Cryptalgo) and VP (888.com), investor (5 years with VC and PE firms), 10 years in sales/marketing/BD, led Mamram’s Training School (BASMACH) software development section and was a software developer with Sapiens while still at high-school. Hillik has also been teaching Personal Development, EQ and Personal Branding seminars for the past 20 years. Hillik studied Math and Computer Science for his BA at Bar-Ilan and holds an MBA from Edinburgh Business School.
	Mr. Ariel Anati is a financial professional in the fields of corporate finance, valuation, strategy and research. He is the Head of Operations at AdlerInlight, an innovation services firm dedicated to multinational industrial companies. In addition, he is a finance lecturer at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya there he teaches the courses "Financial Thinking for Startups" & “Quantitative Methods in Finance”. He holds an M.A. in Financial Economics from the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, M.A. in Law Studies from Bar-Ilan University and a B.A. in Psychology & Communication from the Israel Open University.