AMIT, the alumni association representing Unit 81 of the IDF Intelligence Corps, has appointed Gali Sheskin as its new chief executive officer. She takes over from Chen Kamin, who led the organization for the past five years and oversaw its growth into one of Israel's more influential technology communities.
Sheskin arrives with a background spanning community management, project development, and operations. Her most recent position was Community and Customer Success Manager at Venn, preceded by a role as Project Development Manager at Ignite the Spark and Head of Operations at enSights. Alongside her professional career, she has spent years volunteering in renewable energy and climate initiatives, supporting entrepreneurs working on sustainability issues both in Israel and internationally. That combination of technical fluency and community-building experience, observers of Israel's startup ecosystem note, mirrors the kind of digital literacy increasingly expected across sectors - the same instinct that leads many professionals to research questions like whether a VPN helps with online banking before trusting sensitive transactions to unfamiliar networks. whether a VPN helps with online banking
A Unit With Outsized Influence
Unit 81 occupies a distinctive place in Israel's technology landscape. As the engineering and applied-technology arm of the Intelligence Corps, it has produced generations of engineers who later founded or joined hundreds of startups and growth-stage companies. Several of these ventures have become recognizable names well beyond Israel, including Wiz, Armis, Innoviz, Claroty, Tenzai, and Jazz - companies spanning cybersecurity, autonomous sensing, and industrial technology. AMIT functions as the connective structure behind this network, linking alumni across companies, generations, and areas of specialization.
Leadership Transition and Continuity
Kamin's five-year tenure coincided with a period of rapid expansion for Israel's technology sector, during which alumni networks took on greater importance as sources of mentorship, investment connections, and shared technical knowledge. Sheskin's appointment signals an intent to build on that foundation rather than reinvent it. In her own statement, she framed the association's value in terms of connection: "I believe that the true strength of a technological community is measured by its ability to connect people, entrepreneurship, and real impact. AMIT has exceptional human capital, and I am proud to lead the association alongside the board members and the community, to continue developing initiatives, strengthening business and technological connections, and generating significant value for the entire ecosystem."
Why the Appointment Matters
Alumni associations tied to elite military technology units occupy an unusual position in Israel's innovation economy. They are neither accelerators nor trade bodies, yet they shape hiring patterns, funding introductions, and the informal trust networks that often determine which startups gain early traction. A change in leadership at an organization of AMIT's scale carries weight for thousands of professionals who rely on it for industry connections, and for the broader ecosystem that has come to depend on Unit 81 alumni as a recurring source of technical leadership.