International Women’s Day 2021: Coffee talk with Betty and Sivan

In celebration of International Women’s Day, we are excited to highlight the incredibly diverse and talented women across Trax. Throughout the month of March, we will be sharing peer-to-peer interviews with women in various roles and life stages to discuss their careers, how they manage their wellbeing, and where they look for inspiration.

Sivan: My name is Sivan, I’m based in Tel-Aviv. I’ve been with Trax for five and a half years. I started as a Project Manager and three months ago I moved into the R&D Program Manager position. I’m married and  have two boys – one is four and a half years old and the other is a year and a half. They are adorable, but you know, it wasn’t easy in the Corona-time. In my spare time I manage a Facebook community of 3,000 people with two of my friends and I love to dance and read.

Betty: I’m Betty – I don’t have any kids but have four fur babies. I’m a dog lover so I have two Shih Tzus and two Pomeranians. I love travelling to places where I can learn about people, food and culture. Before COVID I went to Mexico, I’m so grateful I did that. My other passion is exercise and health, I love learning new things about that topic.

Sivan: I’m with you with the travelling side. I miss travelling. The last place we’ve been was Morocco with all of my family, my baby was six months old, just before the end of my maternity leave, and it was wonderful.

What brought you to Trax?

Sivan: I just realized that I started my career ten years ago January. I studied electrical engineering, but I never really practiced it. I was never doing one just thing, I was always working with many interfaces and departments. This is something I’ve done in my entire career and I really like it this way. And what brought me to Trax was a desire to work with a nice startup in Tel-Aviv. I’ve been with Trax for a long time and I have had many opportunities to grow with the company. Trax is a crazy place, always changing and if you are in the right mindset you can use it to grow. That’s what happened to me here.

Betty: What really attracted me to Trax was the startup culture. I used to work at a multinational IT company and kind of got tired of that, too many protocols and I wanted a change of environment and style. And I always heard that Israeli people are so passionate about their work and when this opportunity came across, I thought “Wow, this is excellent!” and wanted to give a shot. And I’ve been enjoying the ride for the past four years. It’s a fast pace, but it fits my personality. What I also enjoy is that it provides me the chance to learn and managers are also supportive of that.

Has your role changed since joining the team? How so?

Sivan:  I started as a Lavazza Customer Project Manager, managing a global project. After that I built the first professional service team, then I built the global data acquisition service team for implementing everything that relates to collection. These roles involved hiring people, building the processes, and making sure they’re working. I used to manage a team of 15 people. It was really amazing, like having more children. Watching them growing in their role melted my heart. Now I’m back to internal program management and I do many parallel things, focusing on the big programs. I’m working on a cross-department, cloud cost-reduction project, also implementing the new R&D values and dealing with OKRs. Now I’ve moved on from 15 to zero people reporting to me which has its pros and cons.

Betty: I started as a Global Event Director where I worked with each region to plan and execute end-to-end global events, called Trax Innovation Days. Last year I became Global Program Director overseeing marketing programs and campaigns, sharing best practices, tools and looking at KPIs. This role is totally new to me, but I enjoy it. There is a learning curve, so I’m providing information to the teams and learning in the process. We implemented the Marketing Hub, for example, where people can go to get marketing related information. It has been great so far. Working globally means you’re interacting with a lot of regional teams and also working closely with solution marketing, legal, finance, pretty much everyone.

Sivan: I agree, this is the fun part of being program manager that you have the chance to meet all these interesting people. With the acquisitions Trax has become more broad. We now have 350 people in R&D and need to set the right processes and engagement. It is super interesting culturally and professionally. As people who love travelling, this is a benefit of the job for us.

What do you do for self-care?

Betty: I normally  do a gratitude rampage (just like writing a journal) in the morning while listening to a gratitude playlist when I wake up and before I go to bed. Also, getting enough sun while exercising or just to be in nature is part of my self-care.

Sivan: It’s a really nice attitude. I’m thinking of what I do, and I think having coffee outside after I drop my kids at the kindergarten is what I do for myself in a sense, that’s the peak of my day.

Where do you go for inspiration?

Sivan: I listen to Israeli podcasts while walking and they bring me a lot of inspiration to think a bit differently and get out of my comfort zone. They contain conversations with inspiring people, a bit of coaching, that kind of thing. Participating in this initiative is also because of the podcasts, usually I don’t have much time to do such things, but this is an opportunity to meet new people and share my ideas and thoughts. So, let’s thank the podcasts.

Betty: My inspiration depends on the area. There’s Mel Robbins on Instagram and what I like about her is that she’s very real and she likes to share her own life issues, for example how to deal with stress or anxiety and she is not shy to show her own vulnerability even she is a coach. A lot of people are fake on Instagram and I don’t believe in that. The other one I like is Jay Shetty, he is a British author, former monk and coach. He wrote a book called ‘Think like a Monk’. The topics he talks about really resonate with me. So, they are the ones I actually listen to a lot.