Nadav Karasov, assistant opinion editor at The Diamondback (left), and Danna Koren serve as the TAMID Israel Investment Group’s  directors of membership.

Danna Koren had zero business experience when she first learned about the TAMID Israel Investment Group last November.

While attending the Jewish Federation of North America’s General Assembly conference, the senior government and politics major met a group of students who ran the University of Michigan’s chapter of TAMID – a program that allows student entrepreneurs to connect with business professionals in the Israeli economy.

Less than a year later, Koren and a group of other students successfully launched this university’s chapter of TAMID and accepted their first class of 33 students this semester.

“We really just want to give everyone a wholesome foundation from which they can build their connection to Israel and build their business application skills,” said junior economics and finance major Ira Rickman, one of the chapter’s founders.

TAMID was first launched by two students at the University of Michigan in 2008 and has since spread to nine campuses across the nation. The program is apolitical and nondiscriminatory and students are not required to have a business background in order to join.

For the first phase of the program, students attend seminars to learn more about the Israeli economy and hear from a series of speakers over the course of nine weeks. This is followed by the business application phase, in which members have the opportunity to manage up to $5,000 worth of Israeli link securities and provide free business consulting to Israeli start-up companies. For the final phase of the program, a small group of students travel to Israel over the summer for an eight-week internship alongside TAMID members from across the country.

Koren – who serves as the program’s vice president of membership – said the program demands a diverse pool of members to match the wide variety of projects they will undertake.

“We’re looking for people that are driven, dedicated, hard-working – not necessarily experts in the business world already,” said Koren.

The group’s founders said they hope the program will give students the opportunity to network with real business leaders in one of the world’s fastest-growing economies.

“What we’re helping students with is developing their career and giving them a chance to work and gain work experience during the school year,” Rickman said. “Israel is the avenue through which we can do that, but it’s not the end goal. The end goal is the students.”

And business professor Brent Goldfarb, who serves as the faculty advisor for TAMID, said he was impressed by the work students put in to get the program off the ground.

“I’m watching a very entrepreneurial initiative,” he said. “And these aren’t students being led, these are students leading.”

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