Intervenant

Yossi VARDI

Chairman - International technologies

One of Israel’s early entrepreneurs, Yossi Vardi co-founded, led, funded and helped build more than 80 high-tech, energy, natural resources, and clean-tech companies. Many of them went public, including Tekem , Alon Energy, Granite Hacarmel, answers.com, scopus, International Lasers Technologies, epals, tocows, brightcove, others were acquired : Gteko (by Microsoft), Tivella (by Cisco), Airlink (by sierra Wireless), Foxytunes (by yahoo), Starnet (by IAC), Gift project (by  ebay).

As the founding  investor of Mirabilis Ltd, -the creator of iCQ – Vardi co-pioneered instant messaging. ICQ was one of the internet’s earliest successes, later sold to AOL.

Vardi was chairman of the board of trustees of Jerusalem Foundation, served on the board of trustees of Weitzman Institute. Hebrew university, open university, the Technion. was advisor to the World Bank, United Nations Development Program, CEO’s of Amazon, AOL, Siemens Albis, and Allied–signal. Member of the World Economic Forum, and Co-chairman of the EU-Israel business dialogue.

Vardi has an extensive government and public career,was the director general of Ministry of Development and Ministry of Energy. Was chairman of Israel National Oil Company, and Israel Chemicals. participated in the peace talks with Egypt, Palestinians, Jordan and Syria.

He received  Honorary Doctorate from Technion, Israel Institute of Technology; the Prime Minister Hi-Tech Award for life achievements (twice);  Best Internet Personality by TechCrunch Europe; Entrepreneur of the Year by Tel Aviv University, Europe’s 25 top techs by Wall Street Journal; and one of the 200 Greatest Israelis of all times by Ynet.