2015 Winners of the Social Impact ABIE Award

Daniela Raijman

Daniela Raijman joined Google in 2007 as the first female engineer at Google’s R&D center in Tel Aviv, Israel. Initially, she worked on YouTube products, and later joined the Technical Infrastructure organization working on software used to power and monitor Google’s network.

She co-founded Mind The Gap in 2008 and is still an active member of the team, served as a reviewer for The Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship in 2008-2009, and today serves as regional co-lead in Europe, the Middle East & Africa for Women@, Google’s global women’s organization.

She holds a B.S. in Computer Science and Biology and M.Sc. in Computer Science from Tel Aviv University. She lives in Kiryat Ono, Israel with her husband and two toddler boys.

Michal Segalov

Michal joined Google in 2007 and is a Software Engineer and Manager, leading groups of engineers on the Google Play team focusing on apps and games discovery, Play Store consumer features, and game APIs for developers.

Michal co-initiated Mind The Gap, a program aimed at encouraging high school girls to select computer science and math as their high-school major. The program expanded globally and is now in its 8th year, with more than 10,000 participants to date.

Michal holds a B.A. in computer science from the Technion, and a M.Sc in computer science from Tel Aviv University. She recently moved from Tel Aviv to California, where she lives with her husband and son.

Mind the Gap

Mind The Gap, the brainchild of Daniela Raijman and Michal Segalov, is a program aimed at encouraging high school girls to select computer science and math as their high-school major. The program, now in its 8th year, was initiated in Google’s Israel office with executive support of Yossi Matias, VP Engineering and Israel site lead, and with help of many enthusiastic Google volunteers, and has expanded globally to Japan, Poland, Brazil and North America.

The program is built to scale, making it easy to replicate across countries, companies and different aspects of STEM and CS industries. Mind The Gap targets perception issues among young women regarding CS and STEM, by providing role models they can relate to and a better understanding of what CS is or what a CS career means. Mind the Gap also gives a better understanding about the technology space as a whole, including work environments, and why it’s an excellent industry for women.

Read more about Daniela, Michal and Mind the Gap program here, and learn about the Social Impact ABIE Award here.