Ginger

Yael Karov Founder & CEO

Yael Karov has an outstanding professional and academic record of almost 20 years in the field of natural language processing and machine learning, as well as a successful track record in the commercial launch of innovative products to the market. Prior to founding Ginger Software, Yael joined Rosetta Genomics [NASDAQ:ROSG] at its early stages, serving as Chief Technology Officer & Vice President Research and Development. She led the R&D team to achieve revolutionary scientific results in the domain of genetics, based on a breakthrough machine-learning model, and spearheaded a successful IPO. Prior to Rosetta Genomics, Ms. Karov was the founder and Chief Technology Officer of Agentics, a company specializing in free-text classification of e-commerce product information based on natural language processing.

When Agentics was acquired by Mercado Software, Ms. Karov subsequently led the sale of Agentics technology to Microsoft's MSN division. Before founding Agentics, Ms. Karov served as a Director of Research and Development at Click Software [NASDAQ:CKSW], where she founded and led the R&D team of Nester Technologies in the development of a product based on a solution to a combinatorial optimization research problem. She is the inventor and co-author of over 20 patents, and the author of numerous publications in leading computer science journals. Ms. Karov holds a M.Sc. in Mathematics and Computer Science from the Weizmann Institute of Science. In her free time, Yael enjoys writing fiction and reading poetry.

David (Dudu) Noy Vice President, Product and Marketing

Dudu is a passionate consumer product and interactive media professional with over 20 years of experience in designing, managing, and marketing first class innovative products for large scale communities. Prior to Ginger, Dudu was leading the product at Taboola.com (>100M Monthly Users) and before that leading the product at Metacafe.com (>50M Monthly Users). Dudu also teaches Product Management at the Interactive Media program at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya (IDC).

Earlier in his career, Dudu assumed management positions at leading Telecom companies (TTI Telecom, Amdocs, ECTel), working with major Telecom carriers in US, Europe and South America.
Dudu is a graduate of the prestigious “Interdisciplinary Program for Outstanding Students” at Tel Aviv University, where he pursued the field of cognitive and computational Neuroscience, and completed a patent protected master’s thesis in the field of intelligent human-computer interaction. Other passions include Yoga, swimming, Brazilian music and playing the piano.

Ziv Isaiah CTO

Ziv Isaiah is a software architect, product strategist and entrepreneur with 15 years of industry experience in high-tech companies as ECI Telecom (ECIL), Check Point (CHKP), Cellglide and Imagine Communications. Prior to joining Ginger Ziv served as a technology and strategy consultant for several startups and major software companies in the spaces of communication, digital video and solar energy.
Prior to that Ziv founded Spritecom, an advanced TV advertising platform and BOXEE, an award-winning social media center.
Ziv holds degrees in Electrical Engineering (B.Sc) and Physics (B.Sc) from Tel-Aviv University as part of an interdisciplinary excellency program.
In his free time, Ziv loves to cook, bake and spend time with his family and friends.

Alex Ben-Ari Vice President, R&D

Alex Ben-Ari has 13 years of experience in software engineering, architecture and management of software development processes. In his previous position, Alex managed the software development unit in Rosetta Genomics, where he led a large scale effort of developing and executing distributed machine learning algorithms on very large amounts of genomic data. Alex has a special passion and expertise in agile software development practices and processes and has successfully introduced and cultivated them in multiple development environments over the years.

Guy Melamed Vice President, Products

Guy brings an innovative approach to his work by integrating the fields of business, product and design. Prior to joining Ginger, Guy was the Director of Product and Solution Design at Time To Know, a high-tech start-up delivering digital solutions for the classroom.
Guy led a diverse team of product managers, UX experts, GUI designers, and instructional designers to design the company's products and define the design strategy. Guy also has an entrepreneurial spirit that he combines with his extensive experience in the world of media. His previous positions in the film, television and arts industries have included CEO of The Lab, a performing arts & technology center; CEO of the Acco Dance Center; and owner of the Eureka film company. He has also held various positions in production houses and for TV channels in Israel and Europe. Guy graduated with an M.A. in Communication Science & Film from the University of Amsterdam. Guy is trilingual in Hebrew, Dutch, and English and in his free time enjoys the arts, movies, surfing, and extreme sports.

Micha Y. Breakstone Vice President, NLP Platform

Micha is a technology visionary and entrepreneur with strong roots in academia and broad experience in diverse aspects of NLP and generative linguistics. Micha recently returned from two years at MIT, where he managed the Experimental Syntax and Semantics Lab as part of his ongoing PhD research. Prior to joining Ginger, Micha served as chief linguist at Digital Trowel – a text mining and data analytics company. While at MIT he founded ExceLingo, a startup specializing in language instruction for mobile platforms. Micha received his Master’s in Mathematics from Hebrew University (Cum Laude) specializing in algebraic topology and a Bachelor’s in Computer Sciences and Mathematics (Cum Laude), graduating from HUJI's prestigious 'Amirim Teva' program for excelling students. Micha has published several well-received papers in both theoretical and computational linguistics, and is a recipient of the President’s Scholarship at HUJI, where he is expected to complete his PhD in the near future. Micha is passionate about languages, computational linguistics and writing.