I was born in Sale, Cheshire, to Dan and Frieda Porat and raised in a close-knit Jewish family. My mother was born in the British Mandate of Palestine. My father escaped Vienna after Kristallnacht, joined the British Army as a teenager, and later served in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. In 1996, the USC Shoah Foundation recorded his testimony—an archive my family and I deeply value.

We moved to the United States when my father became a physics research fellow at Harvard, with his visa sponsored by then-Senator John F. Kennedy. A few years later we settled in Palo Alto, where he spent 26 years at SLAC. His work touched ion implantation and particle-detection tools, and he collaborated with leaders such as Melvin Schwartz and Burton Richter. Science was the soundtrack at home.

Entrepreneurship was, too. My brother, Marc, later co-founded General Magic, which helped shape the early mobile era. I chose an economic lens: a B.A. in Economics and International Relations from Stanford, an M.Sc. in Industrial Relations from the LSE, and an MBA with honors from Wharton.

Those experiences—family history, scientific rigor, entrepreneurial energy, and formal training in markets—shape how I lead today: transparent in process, evidence-driven in decisions, and focused on building capabilities that compound over time.

#71 America’s Richest Self-Made Women (2025)

#12 Power Women (2024)