Chief Executive Officer, BrainQ

Yotam was born and raised in Ramat Gan, Israel, and grew up within the national religious community and the Bnei Akiva youth movement. Yotam served as a combat officer in the IDF. During the 2nd Lebanon War, two missiles hit his unit, causing severe casualties. Having survived the experience, Yotam vowed to use this gift of his life to good end. He went to school, receiving a B.A. in math, computer science, and cognitive science, as well as an M.Sc. in economics, both from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He then worked at BCG for several years, leading strategic projects in countries around the world. Then, Yotam, seeking to fulfil his post-war promise to himself, co-founded BrainQ, a Jerusalem-based startup that is developing a medical device that hopes to help people paralysed by neurological disorders, such as strokes, get back on their feet. BrainQ has been selected by Google as 1 of 4 companies in the world poised to change healthcare using aritificial intelligence. Yotam often finds himself reflecting on Steve Jobs’s famous talk on “connecting the dots” and feels fortunate to have been able to leverage his academic and business background to lead his team up this Mt. Everest of neuroscience. In 2017 he co-founded Hyperloop-IL, a nonprofit that promotes technology in Israel. Yotam lives today in Jerusalem with his wife Lior and son Yehonatan. He is also a faculty member at IDC Herzliya’s M.B.A. program