Dafna Gabbay on Organising Her Life in Confinement

This post is also available in: Français (French) Русский (Russian)

Dafna Gabbay is the founder of a medical advisory start-up, Curical Technologies. Curical Technologies is on the mission to combat different types of bacteria with the help of adding copper to medical devices. Dafna lives in Tel Aviv, Israel. She spent a part of her life in New York and has three years of the Israeli army experience that she considers highly beneficial. She is also a mother of 4 children, loves traveling and sharing outdoor activities with her family. Dafna practices meditation in her everyday life. She believes that the organization is a key to the fast-moving life. A full interview with Dafna is coming soon on our website.

How do you maintain your activities at this moment? 

So luckily, I’ve raised sufficient funds last year for Curical, so I’m really grateful that this crisis didn’t catch me in the middle of the fundraising. Otherwise it could have been very very hard. I’m grateful for that. We did have some testing in the U.S., in L.A., but we are also working a lot in Germany, and Germany was relatively OK. I’ve had a lot of discussions with the shareholders, and everyone is concerned, everyone wanna see that the business is still going, so we’re OK.

The silver lining of the lockdown

You know, on a personal level, there is the impact on the financials. I cut my salary a little bit to have a longer runway. My husband is a lawyer, so they have also been very cautious. First, we were concerned about that. Then I was reassured that on the personal level it would be fine, we have a lovely time. We have 4 teenagers at home, and the two older ones are in the senior year of High school. I really feel it’s the last year with them at home. I felt really grateful, so we saw movies every night, the whole family, my husband cooks a lot, we do sports together, watch Youtube and stuff, it was a unique experience, and it still is. Because we still work at home three days a week. So a lot of advantages and the unique family time. 

Negative aspects of self-isolation

Negative is really about dealing with the unknown. I listened to Dr. Tara Swart; she’s a psychiatrist, a neuroscientist. I loved her lectures at MIT, so I took a lot of her classes. I made my “action board” after I’ve heard her speak about the crisis. I listened to several Silicon Valley investors to see how everyone is coping. At the end of the day, there is still unknown, like how long this will take and we just have to deal with it and accept it. It’s not easy always, especially when you plan a business, when you have a budget, you don’t know how long it will take, but you know, I’m just doing my best.

How to cope with confinement

I followed a course on a meditation app, it’s very interesting. I learned that, especially during this time, you really need to calm your mind, as much as you can, accept the reality, no thoughts that you can change it, it’s just something global. And do your best, try to stay focused on work. Also we know working from home is not very easy. I have bigger kids, so it’s easier, but my employee has four young kids, so it’s tough to work from home and still be focused. Just be gracious for every minute, that you’re healthy, and you know, Que sera, sera, right?

Read more on Madame Success:

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *