Michal Braverman-Blumenstyk steps down as General Manager of Microsoft Israel R&D
Michal Braverman-Blumenstyk, who has led Microsoft's Israel R&D center for the past 6.5 years, has announced her departure from the company. She will remain in her role until the end of the year.
Michal Braverman-Blumenstyk, General Manager of Microsoft Israel Research and Development and Corporate Vice President of the global Security division, announced that she has decided to step down from her position at the company after 13 years, six and a half of which were as General Manager. Braverman-Blumenstyk will remain in her role until the end of the year, and Microsoft will announce later the appointment of a successor who will lead the research and development center in Israel.
The Microsoft development center in Israel was established in 1991 and is the company's first development center outside the USA. It employs about 3,000 people, about half of whom are in the cyber field. The departure of the head of Microsoft Israel's R&D comes just months after the CEO of Microsoft Israel, Alon Haimovich, also resigned after four years in the role. In his case, too, the company did not immediately announce a successor, but recently announced that Nati Amsterdam from Nvidia would be appointed CEO of Microsoft in Israel.
Braverman-Blumenstyk joined Microsoft 13 years ago to establish and lead the company's cloud security group in Israel. Later, she was a partner in establishing Microsoft's global cloud security and AI division, and after the establishment of the unified security division, she was appointed CTO of the division. For the past six and a half years, Braverman-Blumenstyk has headed Microsoft's research and development center in Israel. During her tenure, the number of employees at the center doubled, spread across six sites.
In an email she sent to the company's employees, Braverman-Blumenstyk wrote:
"As I look back, what I feel most of all is gratitude to the people I worked with and immense pride in what we built together. It was my privilege to lead the Israeli development center for the last six and a half years, and this is the part of my journey that I am most proud of. Since October 7, and during the challenging period that followed, your resilience and perseverance will stay with me for the rest of my life. I am leaving with deep gratitude and confidence that the best for the Israeli development center is yet to come. It was truly a once-in-a-lifetime privilege."
