Eynat Guez

Origins and early life

Eynat Guez was born in France, the second of three children, and was four years old when her family made aliyah and settled in Netanya. Her childhood was overshadowed by her mother's grave illness after a series of strokes, and she learned early to fend for herself: when she understood that no one would organise her bat mitzvah, the Jewish coming-of-age celebration, she booked the DJ and the hall herself, as she told Globes in 2019.

Work and career

As a teenager she worked as a journalist for television programmes on Channel 2 and on Israeli Educational Television and for the youth newspaper Ma'ariv La'noar, and she swam competitively. She served in the Israel Defense Forces as the adjutant of an F-16 squadron and later earned a degree in political science and business administration from the Open University of Israel. After the army she spent seven years as chief operating officer of LR Group, a holding company that built infrastructure projects in Africa, and in 2009 she founded Relocation Source, followed four years later by Expert Source, which helped companies expand into East Asia.

In 2016 she founded the payroll and payments company Papaya Global with Ofer Herman and Ruben Drong, starting without any outside funding. In March 2021 the company raised one hundred million dollars at a valuation of more than a billion, which made her the first woman to lead an Israeli hi-tech unicorn, and by September 2021 it was valued at 3.7 billion dollars.

Recognition

The Jerusalem Post placed her eighth on its 2021 list of the fifty most influential Jews, the Peres Center for Peace and Innovation gave her its Medal of Distinction in 2022, and in 2023 she was active in the hi-tech protest against the government's judicial reform.