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. Since 2021 Berry serves as Director of Technology in the office of the CTO at Google Cloud.
Early life and education Orna Berry was born in Jerusalem to Raissa 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. 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. 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.
Career
Research and development 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.
Ornet Data Communication Technologies 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.
Public service 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. While serving in this office, she was the chairperson of the BIRD Foundation which helps foster relationships between US and Israeli companies focused on R&D. She negotiated the Israeli government's participation in the European Fifth Framework Program for R&D, and chaired ISERD, the governmental organization responsible for the country's participation in the program. She also chaired the joint R&D funds with Canada, the UK, South Korea, and Singapore. 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.
Business entrepreneurship 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. 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. 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. 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.
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