#MentorSpotlight || Meet Nitzan Cohen Arazi

“I’m an ‘amateur.’ The more I know, the more I realize I don’t know. But I know that I love what I do.”

Background

As a teenager, Nitzan spent many years involved with Israeli youth movements. In charge of a large age group by 17 and partly running the region by 18, Nitzan was given a lot of responsibility from an early age.

With another year of social/ community work, leading an American oversees program and being a commander in the air force in the IDF, Nitzan went on to study communications at IDC and again learned the importance of extra-curricular activities. Nitzan credits her strong leadership skills, attuned focus on people and their motivations, and belief that one learns most out of the classroom, to her many years volunteering.

After graduating, Nitzan was connected to Eden Shochat, legendary Israeli entrepreneur and founder of The Junction accelerator, as part of the Genesis Partners VC, one of the leading most active VC’s in Israel. Eden offered Nitzan the position of managing director in the accelerator, which exposed her to the vast Israeli startup scene.

During her time at The Junction, Nitzan met over 200 teams and supported over 70 of them in a 3 months acceleration process. While speaking to a delegation from Deutsche Telecom, Nitzan was told about an opportunity at Hub:raum, Deutsche Telekom’s Berlin- based vehicle to engage with early stage startups. This allowed Nitzan to dig deeper into Israel and Berlin based startups and investments, think of valuations and business models, and bridge the two.

Jolt

Working in a startup rather than externally guiding one was not necessarily something Nitzan was looking for. But after meeting her soon-to-be co founders, something clicked and she took a step inward.

Nitzan met Roei and Nadav, through her time advising startups. She grew to love the concept and vision of Jolt, which is making knowledge accessible to all through live video sessions, and joined the team. Jolt is a marketplace for LIVE video casts given by exceptional industry professionals to teams around the world.

“Jolt is about understanding millennials and how this generation is going to affect the workforce. We can no longer stop learning once we’re “done learning” and organizations realize that as well. Understanding the motivations of millennials and letting organizations encourage a space of learning is key”, Nitzan says.

The Jolt platform is giving hungry learners access to the world’s top knowledge through live video lessons given by “Jolters” who work for top companies such as Google and Oracle, and speak about what they do. They practice what they preach.

Striving for ‘amateur’

Nitzan explains her role and responsibilities at Jolt as ‘having’ to meet the most interesting people in the world in order to invite them to become a teacher on the platform, a “Jolter.”

She met one women who considers herself an ‘amateur.’ Nitzan found it strange because she’s used to professionals referring to themselves by more impressive terms. The woman explained that amateur means someone who does something out of love rather than compensation.

With that definition, Nitzan realized she’s an ‘amateur’ too. The more she knows, she realizes she doesn’t know, and the more she thinks about it, she loves what she does.

She finds that her past, working at accelerators and other organizations has showed her common mistakes and good practices. She’s constantly learning from others experiences and is hoping to avoid some of their mistakes.