Orna Berry

Berry returned to the private sector in October 2021 when she was appointed director of technology in the office of the CTO at Google Cloud.

In 2010, Berry joined EMC Corporation as vice president and general manager of the company's centers of excellence in Israel. She was subsequently promoted to corporate vice president of innovation. As part of her role at EMC, Berry led the foundation of the company's new R&D center in Beer Sheva, where EMC became the first company to inhabit the Beer Sheva high tech park in July 2013. Berry stayed with the company following the Dell-EMC merger in 2016 until she stepped down from her role in 2018 to return to public service.

From 2010 to 2017, she served as the chair of the executive committee of the Academic College of Tel Aviv-Yafo, where she also served on the board of trustees.

From 2009 to 2017, Berry was the chairperson of the Israel, Australia, New Zealand and Oceania Chamber of Commerce (IACC).

Berry took part in the Brodet Committee (2007) and the Tishler Committee (2012) (2012), which were both founded to examine the Israeli defense budget and its management. Beginning in 2018, she led national science and technology initiatives in the quantum and artificial intelligence domains.

In late 2006, Berry was elected chairperson of the Israeli Venture Capital Funds Association (IVA), where she served for 3 years. In 2008, she joined a project to invest in Israeli pre-seed startups.

After returning to the private sector, Berry joined Gemini Israel Ventures as a venture partner, a role which she held from 2000 to 2010. As part of this role, she chaired companies including: Lambda Crossing, which manufactured optical components; Riverhead Networks, a DDoS mitigation company which was acquired by Cisco in March 2004; PrimeSense, a sensor and 3D capturing technology company which was acquired by Apple in 2013; and Radware, a communication company. She also served as director of Poalim Capital Markets and publicly-traded companies including Aladdin Knowledge Systems, Alvarion, and Commtouch.

Since 2000, Berry has volunteered to promote education, employment equality, social inclusion and welfare in Israel and around the world, along with promoting Israel's position in the world.

In late 1996, Berry joined the government. She was officially nominated as the chief scientist and director of the Industrial Research and Development Administration in January 1997. She was the first, and as of 2019, is still the only woman to hold this post.

In 1993, Berry co-founded Ornet Data Communication Technologies, which developed scalable and efficient Ethernet switches. While fundraising for Ornet, Berry served as a technical manager of an industrial project at Elbit Systems, and consulted for Intel. In September 1995, Ornet was acquired by Siemens. This was the first acquisition of an Israeli start-up by a European conglomerate.

After graduating, Berry began working at System Development Corporation, later Burroughs and Unisys. It was here that she began her work in Local area networking (LAN). She decided to return to Israel in 1987 to work for the IBM Haifa Research Laboratory where she was involved with hardware simulations on different Intel chip architectures. In 1989, she joined Fibronics and led projects relating to bridging Token Ring and FDDI LANs.

Berry's academic research illustrated how distributed simulation programs could be accelerated via asynchronous distributed computations and was published in 1986. Berry was diagnosed with dyslexia, something which she says influenced her decision to choose a career in science.

Berry received a BA from Haifa University in statistics and mathematics in 1975 and an MA in statistics and operations research from Tel Aviv University. She then enrolled at the University of Southern California (USC), where she received a PhD in computer science in 1986. During this time, she obtained a fellowship from the RAND Corporation.

Orna Berry was born in Jerusalem to Raisa and Yoash Tsiddon (Chatto) and was raised and educated in Tel Aviv. In 1967, she drafted into the Israeli Air Force, where she served as an officer for the flying school until 1970, terminating her military service as a lieutenant.

Orna Berry (Hebrew: ארנה ברי; born December 19, 1949), is an Israeli computer scientist, high-tech entrepreneur, and senior executive in the Israeli science and technology industries. In 1996, Berry became the first woman to serve as chief scientist and head of the industrial R&D operation of the Israeli Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labour. She was awarded the "Yekirat Hanegev" award from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in 2012.

Her father, Yoash Tsiddon (Chatto), was involved in Ha'apala activities of illegal Jewish immigration from Europe and Cyprus detention camps (where he headed one of the camps) to Israel and as a member of the Palmach, he accompanied convoys to Jerusalem during the 1948 1947–1949 Palestine war. Tsiddon was amongst the first combat pilots of the Israeli Air Force, where he founded the 119 Squadron, was the sole pilot in Operation Tarnegol, served as an air force base deputy commander, and became the head of planning and means of combat in the air force before being demobilized as a colonel after 41 years of service. As an entrepreneur and industrialist, Tsiddon won the title of "Outstanding Exporter" and later on was elected to the Knesset as a member of Tzomet party.