Zohar Zisapel, chairman of the RAD Group and one of Israel’s leading high-tech entrepreneurs, announced this week that he plans to attend the October 16-17 VITAL Summit, which immediately added cachet to the already impressive list of participants. Zisapel’s attendance signifies the importance of the Summit, which brings together leading-edge Israeli high-tech firms with venture capitalists, companies, and government leaders from Virginia. This year’s event will be the first of its kind.

The RAD Group is a family of independent companies that develop, manufacture and market solutions for diverse segments of the networking and telecommunications industry. RAD is headquartered in Tel Aviv and has offices around the world. Six RAD Group companies are traded on the NASDAQ Stock Market in the U.S. Others are privately held by the Group's founders and several venture capital firms.  Zisapel will speak about how the RAD Group was built and offer timely advice on how Virginia companies can work with emerging tech firms in Israel to bring their best of breed technology to the US markets.
 
The very successful RAD business model is uncommon in industry today.  Each of RAD’s over a dozen companies operate independently, without a holding company, but is guided by RAD Group founders under a collective strategic umbrella. This decentralized approach maximizes the advantages inherent in smaller business units, such as flexibility, entrepreneurial spirit and management focus. A new company is established when a market opportunity is identified-requiring a technology, marketing approach or corporate culture that does not exist in any of the other companies.  Companies share technology, engage in joint marketing activities and benefit from a common management structure.  Six RAD Group companies are traded on the NASDAQ Stock Market in the U.S.; the Group’s founders and several venture capital firms privately hold others.
 
At the heart of the RAD Group is RAD Data Communications.  Combining the flexibility and innovation of a start-up with the financial strength and international resources of a 21-year-old company, RAD offers carriers, service providers and enterprises the technological know-how, product mix and reliability to address all their access network requirements.  RAD incorporates a broad range of technologies under one roof: ATM; IP; Frame Relay; E1/T1; E3/T3; broadband transmission; fiber optics; voice compression; rate, interface and protocol conversion; routing; ASIC; and integrated management.

Prior to founding RAD, Zisapel served as head of the Electronic Research Department of the Ministry of Defense in Tel Aviv.  He received the Israel Defense Prize in 1979.  In 1994, he was honored with both the Israel Export Award and the Entrepreneur of the Year Award. In 1996, he received the Hugo Raminceanu Award for Economics.

Zisapel received both his bachelors and masters degrees in electrical engineering from the Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology, in Haifa.  He also holds a masters degree in business administration from Tel Aviv University.

Zisapel, along with his brother Yehuda, has been at the forefront of Israel’s high-tech emergence over the past decade.  Zisapel is a board of director for a number of firms and is a frequent speaker at industry events.