Ten Ways Joining TAMID Will Change Your Life
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By TAMID Group August 8, 2017
The job market for new college graduates is getting more competitive; attending a good school and earning good grades are no longer enough.
TAMID Group offers just the competitive advantage to make a business-minded college student stand out.
A selective program, TAMID gives undergraduate students at 46 colleges the opportunity to learn from and work with Israeli companies. Through intensive business projects on campus and in Tel Aviv, TAMID students gain the experience that helps them lock-down sought-after jobs upon graduating.
A semester of business education, featuring Israeli case studies, kicks off the program. For the remainder of students’ undergraduate careers, they either work on consulting projects for Israeli startups or manage an Israel-focused stock portfolio. And in the summer, they can apply to join the TAMID Fellowship — living in Israel for a prestigious internship.
After graduation, members join the TAMID Pro network of young professionals who are embarking on high-level careers while connecting with Israel.
Each member has a different reason for loving TAMID. Here are our top ten:
1) Student Innovation
TAMID Group was the brainchild of two students at the University of Michigan in 2008, and the organization still empowers students to pioneer new ideas. One such initiative is TAMID Tank, a startup pitch competition modeled on the ABC show Shark Tank.
Last spring, TAMID students produced TAMID TANK events in New York and Los Angeles. Daniel Newman, a student at USC and the initiator of the Los Angeles event, says, “Founding TAMID Tank, the first-ever Shark Tank for USC students, sounded simple and easy, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. After assembling a team of 15 dedicated students, fundraising $14,000, securing 3 top-tier Venture Captalists, filtering through dozens of student startups, and running a massive marketing campaign, TAMID Tank finally became a reality, and a huge success.”
2) Career Skills
Students gain skills from working with Israeli companies that cannot be learned in the classroom. And recruiters know that TAMID students are prepared for demanding careers in tech, consulting, and finance.
Brandon Younessi, formerly a student at TAMID’s UC-Berkeley chapter says,“TAMID was the most important experience in my college career that prepared me for my current role in consulting. Every semester, we advised a different start-up tackling a different problem in a different industry. And each time, we worked with a different team comprised of different personalities and skill sets. The intellectual/emotional agility coupled with the organization’s entrepreneurial spirit is what enables me to be successful today at McKinsey.”
3) Network
TAMID provides students with connections that span many different industries, campuses, and countries.
Kelly Yip is the President of TAMID at UCLA. She says, “Being a part of a global business organization that has a presence over 35 different universities has given me the opportunity to meet future business leaders in a wide range of industries that I can proudly call my good friends. Coming from abroad, being part of such a supportive network has allowed me to have friends and connections across America and the ability to reach out to our extensive TAMID Pro/ Alumni network to further progress my business career.”
4) Consulting
Students can choose to join the consulting program, gaining hands-on experience that they otherwise would not get in college.
Mollie Cole joined a TAMID consulting team and quickly gained more responsibility. “I’m not in the business school, so consulting with TAMID at the University of Miami was one of the most refreshing and rewarding things I did all year. I got to work hands-on with Israeli start-ups (Oblingo, a micro finance company and AerialGuard, a drone company), lead my own team after just a semester, and learn so much about a field I would have never touched otherwise.”
5) Fund
Student teams manage an Israel-focused stock portfolio, researching stocks and pitching them to their peers. The most outstanding pitches are chosen for TAMID’s investment account.
Vidya Krovvidi of TAMID at UCLA says, “Being part of the Fund in TAMID is a really valuable experience because we learn techniques of investment we need while also having exposure to Israeli business as part of the larger organization.”
6) Unique opportunities
Benjamin Zirman, a 2017 TAMID Fellow, is interning as a data analyst at RSPCT Basketball Technologies in Petach Tikvah. His manager asked him to travel from Israel to Las Vegas for an exciting assignment.
He reports,“My company gave me an opportunity to run operations and analytics at the NBA Summer League in Las Vegas for all 67 games over a 10 day period. It was definitely one of the most amazing experiences in my life.”
Meanwhile, he recently learned from the organization Gift of Life that he was a genetic match for a cancer patient in need of bone marrow. “The cherry on top was stopping over in Washington D.C. to donate my bone marrow to a 67-year-old woman with Leukemia on my way back to Israel.”
7) Career Connections
Several students have found full-time careers thanks to their time with TAMID.
Sam Strauss of TAMID at Baruch says, “My team was a finalist in TAMID’s 2015 case competition. The case was a marketing challenge from the Israeli tech startup Credifi, and when we were chosen as finalists, I got in touch with the company’s CEO about internship opportunities. Now, almost two years later, I am a full-time employee at CrediFi in New York — and even have my own TAMID interns.”
8) Mentorship
TAMID Group exposes students to Israeli entrepreneurs who are the creators of the world’s most cutting- edge technology.
Jeremy Muhlfelder, a Michigan graduate now entering his final year at Duke University School of Law, credits his internship experience in Israel as a TAMID Fellow with connecting him to an invaluable mentor. “TAMID opened my eyes to the world of start-ups, and most importantly allowed me to spend a summer in Tel Aviv working for a company I had gotten to work with remotely the previous semester. The co-founders of 24me are still close mentors of mine, and they, along with the overall TAMID experience, showed me how I could individually create great change in a small company, which in turn could affect many people around the world. I’m now in law school focusing on Law and Entrepreneurship and will be working out in Silicon Valley after graduating next May- I can honestly say I wouldn’t be where I am today if it wasn’t for TAMID.”
9) Family
Beyond business-focused projects, TAMID enables students to forge new relationships. Khushee Nanavati is a member of TAMID at Brandeis. She says, “TAMID makes you feel connected and appreciated in a larger community. It’s like a massive family where everyone is intelligent and motivated.”
10) Diversity
Sometimes students assume that, because of TAMID’s partnership with Israel, the organization caters primarily to Jewish students. A visit to a TAMID chapter will quickly dispel that notion; TAMID members are future business leaders from all backgrounds.
As Ezra Kapetansky, a former TAMID student leader, tells it, “For my whole life, I’ve grown up in entirely Orthodox Jewish settings including school, camp, and community. Being involved with TAMID, and more specifically partaking in the 2015 Summer Fellowship, opened me up to a much more diverse group of talented people connecting with Israel from many different backgrounds and faiths.”
Image by Kurt Hoffman
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