Tell us a bit about yourself, background and your current role
I was born in Tel Aviv and my background career is in Political Economy, I’ve had a very eclectic career to date and have had some incredible experiences and have met some wonderful people.
I’m an avid traveller and city lover. Cities have an abundance of places to discover, experience and socialise in. Everyone has a slightly different version of any city, our own special kaleidoscope mix of places, tailored to our passions and lifestyle needs. It was this love and interest of cities which led me to come up with the idea for Urbaniser.
Urbaniser is the ultimate app for all foodies, art lovers, shoppers and urban explorers to simply organise the places you need and love in any city in the world. It’s your simple yet smart list making app, your personal little black book of places, always there in your pocket.
Did you ever sit down and plan your career?
I wouldn’t say I sat down and planned out my career. I do however consider myself a problem solver by nature, throughout my career I have found that I love to identify puzzles and then find a solution to the problem. Urbaniser is the solution to a problem I found when I was travelling and exploring.
We’re always on the lookout for new places to experience, whether scrolling through Instagram, reading an article, or chatting with friends. We save them online, on our phones, or on scraps of paper. But we’ll likely never experience most of them. We forget names and locations, and what we’ve saved where. We’re too busy and we’re never in the right place at the right time. Urbaniser allows the user to simply store all their favourite places on one platform with geolocations, open-source data, photos and notes – making it more likely for users to follow through.
Have you faced any challenges along the way?
Launching a city focused app in 2020 when the pandemic hit was the biggest challenge I didn’t see coming. I was able to use this year to make the App as good as possible ready to launch this year. I also have been focusing the App on local travel. As we emerge out of lockdown, now is the right time to launch – safe exploration and unique and memorable experiences have never been so important. This summer it’s all about re-discovering our cities and making the most of local exploration.
What has been your biggest achievement to date?
My biggest achievement to date is seeing a lightbulb moment I had become a reality and bring it to life. Seeing people using and downloading Urbaniser is so rewarding and it’s such an achievement to see how much people are enjoying it.
What one thing do you believe has been a major factor in you achieving success?
I’ve constantly met amazing people throughout my career, and I believe it’s the people I’ve met and the team I’ve always built around me which has been the main factor of success. I am very optimistic by nature, a glass half full person which I also believe has helped me in my career.
How do you feel about mentoring? Have you mentored anyone or are you someone’s mentee?
Mentoring other people is something I’ve done throughout my career. I’ve received some wonderful support from incredible women and this has been ingrained in my career to date so I enjoy passing on knowledge, networks and my experience to other women looking for advice and support on their journey.
If you could change one thing to accelerate the pace of change for Gender Parity, what would it be?
There needs to be more funding for female entrepreneurs, the gap is so large and as we know more funding is given to men starting up businesses. Something needs to be down about this – there are so many inspirational women out there with incredible ideas and funding will massively help accelerate the place of change.
If you could give one piece of advice to your younger self what would it be?
I would tell my younger self to chill out! It took a good few years for me to understand that sometimes things happen which are out of our control, random acts of events can lead to different outcomes.
It’s important to take the positives of how you dealt with a problem and how you would take that and use it the next time. I now take each day as it comes and face any challenges head on.
What is your next challenge and what are you hoping to achieve in the future?
Launching Urbaniser! I want people to use Urbaniser and realise that it can really become an important part of your life and help people plan, explore and navigate city visits better than ever before. I can’t wait to see how people use Urbaniser and how we can learn from them and continue to develop the app as time goes on.
WeAreTheCity has a back catalogue of thousands of Inspirational Woman interviews, including Cherie Blair, Paula Radcliffe MBE, Caprice Bourret, Anna Williamson and many more. You can read about all our amazing women here.
