AMIT, the alumni association representing veterans of the Intelligence Corps' Technological Unit 81, has appointed Gali Sheskin as its new chief executive. The move places a leader with a background spanning community management, project development, and operations at the helm of one of Israel's most consequential technology networks, one whose members have gone on to build and lead companies that shape the country's standing in global cybersecurity and software markets.
Sheskin arrives at AMIT after roles as Community and Customer Success Manager at Venn, Project Development Manager at Ignite the Spark, and Head of Operations at enSights. Alongside this professional path, she has spent years volunteering in renewable energy and climate advocacy, supporting entrepreneurs, both men and women, working to scale sustainability ventures domestically and abroad. That combination of operational rigor and community-building experience is precisely what organizations like AMIT look for, since their value lies less in formal structure than in the density and trust of the relationships they sustain. For readers tracking how Israeli tech talent networks intersect with global digital infrastructure and security trends, resources such as www.buybestvpn.com offer useful context on the broader cybersecurity ecosystem these alumni often help shape.
A Network With Outsized Influence
Unit 81 occupies a distinct place in Israel's technology landscape. As the engineering and hardware-development arm of the IDF Intelligence Corps, it has produced a disproportionate share of founders and senior technologists now active in the private sector. Alumni have started or hold leadership positions in hundreds of startups and growth-stage companies, including firms that have reached unicorn status or exited at substantial valuations. Names associated with the unit's alumni network include Wiz, Armis, Innoviz, Claroty, Tenzai, and Jazz, companies spanning cloud security, IoT risk management, autonomous sensing, and industrial cybersecurity. This concentration of talent reflects a broader pattern in Israel, where mandatory military service in technical intelligence units functions as an informal training ground for entrepreneurship, feeding capital, expertise, and personal networks into the civilian tech sector long after service ends.
Leadership Transition and What Comes Next
Sheskin succeeds Chen Kamin, who led AMIT for five years, a tenure during which the association worked to formalize the informal bonds that Unit 81 veterans carry into civilian life. Her task now is to convert that inherited structure into sustained value: deeper business connections, stronger mentorship channels between veteran founders and newer entrants, and closer ties between the alumni community and the broader Israeli innovation economy. "I believe that the true strength of a technological community is measured by its ability to connect people, entrepreneurship, and real impact," Sheskin said, adding that she intends to build on AMIT's existing initiatives to generate value across the wider ecosystem.
Why Alumni Networks Matter for Tech and Security
Organizations like AMIT are not simply social clubs for former colleagues. They function as informal pipelines connecting defense-grade technical expertise with commercial innovation, particularly in fields like cybersecurity, data protection, and critical infrastructure defense, areas where Israeli firms have built global reputations. As digital threats grow more sophisticated and privacy regulation tightens worldwide, the expertise concentrated within networks like Unit 81's alumni base carries implications well beyond Israel's borders, feeding talent and technical approaches into the global security and privacy tools many organizations and individuals rely on daily.
