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As an engineering student, Yariv Bash dedicated countless hours to hands-on work, sacrificing top grades in order to open doors for out-of-this-world opportunities.

After co-founding SpaceIL, Yariv and his team entered the Google Lunar XPrize competition on little more than a whim and a little bit of whiskey. They built and launched Beresheet, the first private interplanetary robotic mission to the moon. Although the landing pro...

Ashager Araro's reverence for dreams extends far beyond mere aspirations or poetic musings; for her, they hold profound significance embedded in Israel’s history, her ancestral roots, and her personal journey.

Born in Ethiopia, Ashager’s family yearned for a life in Jerusalem for generations. However, upon reaching their longed-for destination, the reality was far from their dreams. Struggling against social isolation and racial...

Today, Uri Buri’s eponymous restaurant “Uri Buri” has garnered international acclaim - but his culinary journey began just steps from home, on Israel’s stunning seaside. Deeply influenced by his family’s tradition of hosting guests from around the world, Uri cultivated a lifelong passion for cooking and community. So, fueled by ambition from a young age, Uri decided to leave school early and pursue his culinary dreams. 

Tra...

Pioneer. Trailblazer. Groundbreaker. These words epitomize today’s guest, Gadeer Kamal-Mreeh. As a member of Israel's Druze religious minority, Gadeer stands out as a symbol of courage, breaking barriers for Druze women and other Israeli minorities alike. Her groundbreaking achievements include being the first non-Jewish anchorwoman to deliver the evening news in Israel—a feat rooted in her lifelong passion for journalism, which be...

Growing up as a Palestinian in Israel, Nuseir Yassin grappled with the complexities of his identity, often feeling adrift between two worlds. It wasn’t until he reached Harvard University, 5,500 miles away from home, that he encountered his first Jewish friend. Despite his new location, the weight of Nuseir’s identity remained palpable, presenting challenges to fitting in that mirrored those faced back in Israel. 

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When deciding which professional path to pursue, Tzipi Livni defied the expectations set by her politically active parents and initially chose a career in law. But sometimes a calling transcends pragmatism, and when Israel found itself split down the middle and rife with tension Tzipi was compelled to change direction and run for office.

Tzipi amassed an impressive array of political roles, most famously, Israel’s Vice Prime Min...

Seth Siegel has a penchant for following his curiosity and doing the unexpected. As a serial entrepreneur, Seth seamlessly moves from one endeavor to the next. This agility led to a diverse range of experience, from practicing law to licensing trademarks, and from writing an award-winning book on the global water crisis to producing a Broadway show. This unconventional career trajectory may have made his stability-oriented father n...

Laura Hassner intentionally sought out educational experiences in unfamiliar environments so she could stretch herself personally and intellectually. From opting into a multilingual school setting, to embarking on foreign exchange experiences in Chile and England, Laura truly considers the world her classroom. 

Eager to introduce a global mindset to students, Laura landed her dream job at Berkeley as builder of an entre...

Tom Cohen's love for music has deep roots that can be traced back to his childhood home, where he and his parents listened to a wide variety of genres without judgment. This impartiality would prove invaluable as Tom later developed his own sound. 

As the founder and head conductor of the Jerusalem Orchestra East and West, Tom creates a new, integrated musical experience that blends sounds from the East and West, old and ne...

Alma and Daniel Hernandez are a dynamic brother-sister duo; each with a powerful story to tell. 

Raised in a loving Mexican-American home, they harnessed their family’s love and support as a springboard to forge their own paths.

During their adolescence, Alma and Daniel each faced unexpected traumas that could have derailed their plans. Instead, they chose to use their healing experiences to help others and turn their strugg...

Felipe Neves takes nothing for granted. Growing up in Brazil, his mother worked tirelessly to provide Felipe with a private education. After graduating from law school in Brazil and working at a law firm for several years, Felipe developed a burning desire to share what he learned about his country’s government and political infrastructure with young Brazilian public school students. This would become Felipe’s modus operandi; learn...

You’ve heard of failing upwards and there’s a reason for that. Today’s guest is best-known for inventing the widely used USB memory flash drive. But perhaps Dov Moran should also be revered as an entrepreneur who isn’t afraid to fail, and isn’t afraid to admit it.

As a child, Dov had the characteristics of an entrepreneur; curiosity, aptitude for technology, and perhaps most importantly, the influence of his grandfather — himsel...

Ten days in Israel and an inherited passion for Indonesia were all Niruban Balachandran needed to dedicate his life to cultivating connections between unlikely cultures. Where others saw the likelihood of failure, Niruban saw opportunity. Believing that his global finance background would be instrumental in promoting peace, he leveraged his experience to transition into the field of international aid.

In this storymark spotlight...

For The New York Times best-selling author, Adeena Sussman, cookbooks aren’t just a collection of recipes — they’re love letters.

At just nine years old, Adeena was tackling complicated recipes in her family’s kosher home. Yet, she was more interested in fostering connections than mastering recipes. Adeena relished the shared stories and camaraderie that occurred when family, friends, and guests gathered together for meals....

According to his middle school yearbook, Matti Friedman wanted to be a journalist when he grew up. The only problem? He didn’t really know what that meant. 

But Matti knew that writing was the best way to make sense of a very complicated world. As his career progressed, Matti allowed his life experiences to influence the formation of his work. From his early days in Israel living on a kibbutz, to his first gig as a reporter...

For Adi Altschuler, “inclusion” and “safe spaces” have been a way of life since childhood. More than performative buzzwords, she embodies both by truly seeing and hearing those who are different.

At the age of 16, Adi successfully established Krembo Wings, a social movement for all youth with and without disabilities. The idea blossomed from a beautiful friendship she had with a young boy with cerebral palsy. She would later tac...

In an effort to become more comfortable in her own skin, literally, Siqu Mou utilized her joint MBA/MPA degree from Harvard and Stanford to find new solutions to age-old skincare problems. Relying on new technology and her entrepreneurial upbringing she founded HelloAva, the first online smart-skin consultant.

Gil gets a peek into Siqi’s early years where creativity and achievement were modeled first by her parents and later by ...

Traffic: most of us tense up just thinking about it, but not today’s guest! He studied and obsessed over it — believing there had to be a solution to this aggravating byproduct of modern civilization. He was right. Uri Levine co-founded Waze; the first crowd-sourced, real-time, traffic app. While he didn’t eliminate traffic altogether, he successfully changed the navigation game entirely. Uri’s entrepreneurial success didn’t st...

At her very first judo class in the mid-1970’s, Yael Arad was the only girl. The youngest of four, she was used to being a tagalong, but in this class she led the pack. What followed was an unexpected journey that opened up her world and laid the foundation for her future career.  

Yael Arad took to the sport instantly, not only because of her natural athletic aptitude, but for the mental agility and fortitude it requi...