How Zoom Became a Defining App of Our Time
Featuring Technion alumni Oded Gal ’94
and Itzik Parnafes ’90
Zoom is the new conference room, the new water cooler, the new classroom, and even the new living room couch where grandparents read to their grandchildren. In short: Zoom is the new normal. Join us to hear how the world leader in modern enterprise video communications for business came to dominate and transform all facets of our lives. Oded Gal, Chief Product Officer at Zoom, and technology disrupter Itzik Parnafes will discuss how Zoom helped people worldwide connect during the pandemic — and what’s next.
Roslyn B. Payne, president of Jackson Street Partners in San Francisco, and Chair of UpMetrics, will introduce the program’s speakers.
Featured Speakers
About the Speakers
Oded Gal ’94 serves as Chief Product Officer at Zoom, responsible for leading the company’s product management. He has more than 15 years of product experience, providing in-depth knowledge in video-centric collaboration and hands-on experience in building large-scale, cloud-based services.
Before joining Zoom, Mr. Gal held leadership positions in video conferencing and unified communications product management as VP of Product Management at Blue Jeans Network and head of UC integrations at Cisco Webex. He has also served as Director of Business Development at Radvision.
Mr. Gal earned his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the Technion.
Itzik Parnafes ’90 is a general partner at the tech-focused investment firm Battery Ventures. He works on early stage investments in information technology with entrepreneurs developing disruptive innovations to transform the way we live in the digital era.
Mr. Parnafes spent most of his career as an entrepreneur. He co-founded Kagoor Networks, a leader in voice-over-IP technologies, which he led to a successful acquisition by Juniper Networks. He also headed R&D of Class Data Systems until it became the first of many acquisitions by Cisco Systems in Israel.
He led a landmark infrastructure project in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) that won the prestigious Israel Defense Award, and was on the Forbes Midas List Europe of best venture capital investors for three consecutive years. Mr. Parnafes holds bachelor’s degrees in computer science and math from the Technion.