Birthright Israel is launching a new Global Business Summit in November in Tel Aviv, connecting its top donors from the Diaspora and Israel, the organization exclusively told eJewishPhilanthropy.
The gathering, which is scheduled for Nov. 1-3, emerged from regular requests from donors to learn more about Israel’s business landscape and in an effort to more efficiently expose funders to the organization’s work, Birthright Israel CEO Gidi Mark told eJP on Wednesday.
Ordinarily, he said, the organization arranges individual tours and visits for donors throughout the year. This way, they can organize one large one for all of them.
“Throughout the year, we do separate tours for our funders, and after we spoke with many of them, they expressed great interest in meeting with their Israeli counterparts, who are also donors to Birthright,” Mark said. “So we said, let’s do one day of showing them tours and around areas that are connected to Birthright, and one day of introducing them to what the Israeli economy has to offer. Because the Israeli economy can also benefit from stronger connections to business leaders from around the world.”
The invite-only summit will feature several of Birthright Israel’s largest donors from Israel and abroad — most notably Dr. Miriam Adelson — as well as British investor Sir Ronald Cohen; Eyal Waldman, founder of Mellanox; Amit Krig, NVIDIA-Israel site leader and senior vice president of networking software; former Mossad director Yossi Cohen; investor and ICON founder Yasmin Lukatz; former Microsoft Israel CEO Shelly Landsmann; author Micah Goodman; entrepreneur Yoel Cheshin; real-estate developer Danna Azrieli Hakim; and Angela Homsi, co-founder and president of Ignite Power.
The three-day event will open with a gala recognizing the organization’s supporters, featuring remarks from Israeli President Isaac Herzog. This will be followed by a day of speeches and discussions from top Israeli business leaders and public figures. On the final day, the roughly 350 participants will visit volunteering sites, meeting Birthright Israel participants and the communities where they have been volunteering since the Oct. 7 terror attacks.
The organizers said that the summit will also highlight the financial impact that Birthright Israel has had since it launched 26 years ago, contributing an estimated $2.6 billion to the Israeli economy, through hotel stays, bus rentals, tour guides, restaurant meals and site visits, among other things.
“Combining business and purpose has been my life mission, and this first Birthright Israel Business Summit is the culmination of 26 years of impact on nearly one million lives and tens of thousands of supporters from around the world,” Ethy Levy, Birthright Israel’s vice president of global resource development and partnerships, said in a statement. “It is our way to give back to our supporters by providing an exclusive and intimate platform for networking, doing business and doing good together.”
Most of the participants and the presenters are existing Birthright Israel donors, Mark said, and the event is primarily aimed at supporting and educating them, but he acknowledged that bringing together some of Israel’s and the world’s top business leaders will also likely attract new funders.
“The main goal is showing a different face of Israel to our existing funders,” he said. “But, of course, I assume that this will bring us some new donors.”