Women Day 2025 – Meet Doron Porat
Co-founder, Mother, Podcast Host
Doron is a co-founder and CEO of Lakeway, a post-seed startup in the data management space. She’s also a mother of two daughters (Arbel – 11, and Gome – 8.5), a podcast host and a gardening enthusiast, interior design, and metadata!
Throughout her career, Doron has led teams in the data and infrastructure domains, and today she focuses on creating innovative solutions that enable data teams to work smarter, faster, and more efficiently.
Looking forward, she envisions Lakeway leading a revolution in the world of data modelling and dynamic accessibility.
An Effective Work Environment for Data Professionals and Developers
Lakeway is a platform that allows data teams to simplify and streamline organizational data management through intelligent identification of usage patterns, better resource management, and by providing automated insights and recommendations.
The platform helps data teams connect infrastructure with user needs seamlessly by analysing usage patterns and generating smart recommendations, suitable for companies dealing with high-scale operations.
Basically, Lakeway helps companies understand how their data is being utilized, save costs, and create a more effective work environment for data engineers and platform managers.
Data is the Key to Business Innovation
We asked Doron how she got into the field, and she said: “I’ve always been drawn to trying to understand complex systems and how to improve them, which led me over the years to gravitate toward the field of development infrastructure.”
In her view, data is the foundation of every technological system and the key to business innovation.
And with AI it is even more so. Doron believes that the ability to use AI tools to understand and improve the way data is managed, accessed, and used for decision-making is one of the most challenging and fascinating problems today.
Dealing with Challenges – Moving the Market
When we talked about what it’s like to be a female entrepreneur, Doron elaborated: “As I deepen my journey as an entrepreneur, I understand more and more the challenges founders face along the way. I have enormous appreciation for every entrepreneur who has managed to create a real impact on a problem they set out to solve. The entrepreneur’s path is not easy – it’s filled with difficult decisions, uncertainty, and endless challenges. Seeing people who deal with these challenges and still manage to move the market, create real value, and change entire industries – that’s the biggest inspiration in my eyes.”
Come to Learn!
Doron offered a tip for women entrepreneurs – to set aside assumptions and approach everything with a learning mindset. In her view, the stronger our convictions when we start, the less we listen and the slower we respond. She believes that assumptions can help guide the way forward later, but it’s very important to absorb as much as possible and constantly respond.
Women in Key Positions – A Natural Mirror for the Next Generation
We also discussed how to encourage more women to enter the field. Doron said that to encourage more women to take on key roles in the field, it’s important to highlight success stories of leading women and to build a broader infrastructure of networking and mentoring.
She thinks that women often find it difficult to see themselves in senior technological roles simply because there aren’t enough examples around them. Therefore, beyond presenting successful female figures, it’s also important to share the journey they went through – including the challenges, dilemmas, and moments when they almost gave up.
She herself started her career as a BI developer and, to be honest, wasn’t surrounded by women in senior positions she could learn from. Years passed before she figured out on her own how to push her career forward – first to senior management in development, and from there to entrepreneurship and CEO roles. It was a long journey of trial and error, and sometimes professional loneliness.
Doron says that change needs to start with education: “These efforts alone won’t be enough to create real change. Meaningful change must begin long before entering the industry – in the education system, in the content our girls are exposed to from a young age, and in the messages, they receive about their abilities. If women see women in key positions – as interviewers, leaders, investors, and mentors – it will become something natural and self-evident for the next generation.”
So Where Can You Meet Her Soon?
You can catch Doron’s keynote speech at the Leaders in Tech conference on May 7th. The talk will focus on “Designing the Future: Strategic Approaches to Modern Data Organizations” – you’re all invited to come and talk to her there! 😊
In the meantime, you can follow her podcasts – Doron mentioned that she’s recently discovered how many people have managed to learn about and be exposed to the world of data through them, which makes her very happy.
Link to Doron’s Podcast –ביצת הדאטה (עברית)
Link to Doron’s LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/porat-doron/
