FEDtalks Speaker: Dafna Litshitz, CEO of Appleseeds Academy and Recipient of the Prime Minister’s Prize for Innovation

FEDtalks Topic: Start Up Region: Building a Biotech Hub in Northern Israel

As CEO of Appleseeds Academy, Dafna Lifshitz will show how the Net@ program, supported by our Jewish Federation, helps high school students in disadvantaged areas of Israel achieve high-level computer skills that would normally be beyond their reach. It’s just one of the ways tech is transforming our partnership region of the Upper Galilee.

About Dafna Lifshitz

Since 2002, Dafna, an attorney by training, has led Appleseeds to unprecedented success in Israel and in Africa. An Israeli non-profit that aims to bridge social and economic gaps in Israeli society by diminishing the country's technological divide- as Israel's high-tech industry booms and members of underprivileged communities are left behind, Appleseeds specializes in the management, implementation and operation of technological-educational programs.

Under Dafna’s leadership, Appleseeds has impacted Israeli society including women, ultra-orthodox Jews, youth-at-risk, new immigrants, and members of the Israeli Arab, Bedouin, and Druze communities via the following Appleseeds programs: Mediterranean Youth Technology Club, Net@ Technological Youth Movement, FIXIT Community Laboratories, Community Knowledge Centers, UpWomen and Youth Forward.

With over 1,000,000 beneficiaries since its founding, 350 centers across Israel and over 90 Centers in Africa, Dafna's work with Appleseeds placed her in Israel's Ha'aretz daily as one of Israel’s 100 Most Influential People. This year Dafna was awarded the prestigious Prime Minister’s Prize for Innovation (2014).