Women’s Day 2025 – Ifat Toledano Shterenberg
Purple Couches, Dreams, and Misdiagnosis
Ifat Sternberg Toledano. Holding a bachelor’s degree in business administration and a master’s in mass communication from the Hebrew University. She established a life-changing startup, after years of managing international brands and business units, and one dream about a purple ceramic couch that opened a new path for her.
Ifat studied ceramic technologies. After years of studies and experiments, she developed a ceramic formula that opened a new path in an international studio for sculpted ceramic furniture. Every morning, she would wake up to realize her dream, working with two sales agencies.
But all this changed during her fourth pregnancy. When Ifat became 100% disabled due to a misdiagnosis, with a prognosis of “welcome to the chronic illness club, addicted to cocktails of pain and inflammation medications in a wheelchair”, she embarked on a new journey, this time focused on her own life.
“PubMed became my best friend, along with my statistical and data analysis skills. I downloaded research into Excel and started building a treatment plan that integrates doctors from the required fields, Western and complementary medicine practitioners, and follow-up laboratory and imaging tests based on research. The plan was updated according to my progress, and so were the medical treatment figures, treatment methods, and tools based on research. It took me 3 years of battles and struggles to recover. Today, I’m more athletic than ever, playing competitive volleyball in a local league and leading Treat Me, the startup born from my recovery experience,” says Ifat.
Integrating Treatment Methods Personally
Treat Me does exactly what Ifat did for herself, just on a different scale. It enables recovery by combining multiple treatment methods from Western and complementary medicine, for body and soul, based on integrative medicine principles. Treat Me contains the world’s first database of integrative research, scientifically proven therapeutic protocols, and the world’s first integrative EHR system developed with 12 integrative treatment method practitioners. It’s a system that can intelligently receive and document relevant information from each treatment method, process it, and make research and therapeutic protocols accessible to practitioners to create a personalized recovery journey tailored to the patient’s needs.
I Didn’t Want to Be One of the “Happy Mothers in Wheelchairs”, I Wanted to Run in the Fields with My Daughters.
Ifat says, “I always loved and appreciated data. I funded my first degree by programming SQL for business research data. This time I returned to the data field because I didn’t want to be one of the ‘happy mothers in wheelchairs’. It was clear to me that I would succeed in running with my four daughters in the fields; it was just a matter of finding how I would reach my goal.”
This Requires Long-Term Work.
To encourage more women in the field and industry, Ifat believes that:
- The field should be made accessible starting from elementary school
- Create learning spaces where women feel comfortable
- Ensure proper gender representation in workplaces
- Create reward programs for workplaces that recruit and promote women according to controlled and published KPIs
- Invest in data fields relevant to women that can change their lives
- Align salaries between men and women in the same institution and role
- Allocate an investment fund to encourage entrepreneurship in fields relevant to women and evaluate them according to relevant KPIs
Spine and Eyes on the Ball
To the budding entrepreneur, Ifat says that just like in a team game, it’s important to maintain your spine and your eye on the ball. With flexibility, curiosity, listening, and learning that will lead you to your goal.
If You Will, It Is No Legend
When we asked Ifat what gives her inspiration, she said – at every stage, new figures are revealed from whom there is something to learn. What has accompanied her throughout her life is Benjamin Zeev Herzl’s quote: “If you will, it is no legend.”
Ifat’s LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/ifat-shterenberg-toledano-147423b3/
