On Growing Up

I grew up outside Philadelphia with my parents and younger brother. We are very close. My parents emigrated from Israel before I was born, and we would frequently visit our extended family there. My savta (grandmother) would host the entire family in her tiny apartment, cooking the best dishes and making strangers feel at home. I always admired her work ethic, generosity, and ability to bring people together. My family taught me early that physical distance is not emotional distance, a belief later strengthened by my many moves across the world.

On Career Insights

Growing up, I wanted to be an author-actress-dancer (venture is so close!), but always loved math. In elementary school, I would make brain teasers and post them on my personal website (very cool – I know). In high school, some of my fondest memories were staying up late in the physics classroom, working with my teammates on physics competitions.

I studied math at Harvard with the hope of applying a quantitative skillset to complex problems. I was lucky to intern and work across Wall Street, the White House, and Silicon Valley – I was ultimately drawn to the tech industry for its fast pace of innovation and potential to shape society. Applying my data science skill set allowed me to be a decision-maker early in my career, including at large companies like Facebook and eBay. I strongly believe that more folks should be able to make data-driven decisions, and that we are nowhere close to hitting the potential of using data and machine intelligence in software products.

These beliefs largely inspired my latest work in product at dbt Labs, an Amplify portfolio company. dbt allows data teams to deploy analytics code using software engineering best practices. The community around this movement is inspirational. While I worked on technical products like platform, metadata, APIs, and webhooks, it’s always ultimately about the people. Innovation in technology can give folks more leverage and more agency in their lives.

On Pivotal Moments

I always loved Beyonce’s music, but my friends made fun of me when I sent cold outreach to Beyonce’s team, pitching that she needed a data scientist and it should be me. Her Head of Digital was not yet convinced, so I sent him a slide deck called “Who Runs the Digital World?” with everything I could do. I began working the next week. The lesson stuck with me – you can open doors in non-obvious arenas. My mindset completely shifted from “what opportunities are available” to “where can we create entirely new opportunities?” I’ve carried this throughout my career, and I bring it with me emphatically when supporting founders.

On Community

Prior to Amplify, I was lucky to work closely with founders in a few different capacities, including as an active angel investor. I have tremendous respect for the founders who spend years obsessed with building the future they want to see, and I am deeply committed to doing whatever it takes to support those personal journeys.

Starting a company is a difficult and lonely job, so I am a believer in community support. I moved to Israel when I was a data scientist at Facebook in order to spend time with my extended family. I knew nobody in my industry. I was fascinated to learn more about Israel’s startup ecosystem and the gender dynamics within it – especially given my own experiences as the only woman in so many professional and academic contexts. I founded a community called Women of Startup Nation, an online page devoted to sharing the stories of technical women in Israel. Learning each person’s unique journey, or riffing about what’s next, never gets old. I interviewed 150+ technical women, including many founders. As the platform grew, we partnered with organizations around the country to help them increase their female applicant pipelines.

We then launched Women of Startup Nation Accelerator, a full-time startup accelerator program in partnership with Google. We ran in-person and online cohorts focused on community and brought together the best mentors, investors, and experts to the table. From there, my conviction in the importance of community support has only gone up. While at Stanford GSB, some classmates and I also launched 20|20 Fund, a first of its kind student community investment vehicle to invest in and support our own classmates in their entrepreneurship journeys.

On Life Outside of Work

Outside of work, I am happiest dancing, painting, and watching musicals. I love being in nature, especially by the water, and am always up for a long walk and talk or a long run and not talk.  Warning you not to enter an Apple Watch competition with me because I won’t back down! Instead, come over – I enjoy hosting dinners, discussions, and board game nights.