itrek Spotlight: Lidor Bar David and Allia Mohamed

Why did you become a leader?

Lidor: I was involved with public diplomacy for Israel before coming to Columbia, and my philosophy was always to present an objective perspective to whoever the target audience was. I originally came to grad school wanting to focus on economic development and technology and learn about other regions in the world, but I decided that being an itrek leader would help give policy students an educated, balanced, objective-as-possible perspective on the region.

Do you think the treks you led accomplished that?

Lidor: You should ask Allia! But I do feel that we managed to accomplish that goal to the fullest. It was amazing that itrek gave us the freedom as leaders to do whatever we wanted with the curriculum. For example, we had a dear friend Rami Nazzal, a Palestinian New York Times reporter, take us through Ramallah and some of the refugee camps in the West Bank. 

Allia: Going into informational sessions about itrek, I definitely had a lot of skepticism about the content. But what was really comforting for me, as an Arab Muslim going to Israel for the first time, was to hear my Israeli peers saying they were going to do everything in their power to give us a well-rounded trip. That was the selling point for me: they knew us, and they knew what we were interested in. There were two things personally that were very special. One was visiting Al Aqsa and being able to share pictures of the mosque with my grandmother in Egypt. The other was visiting the Golan Heights, where my great-great grandfather emigrated from early in the 20th century. 

Can you tell us about openigloo and how it got started?

Allia: Renting in New York City has been a pain point for me for going on 10 years now. I wanted to create a space where renters could share their experiences with specific landlords and buildings and allow others to do their due diligence. Renting an apartment in NYC can be more difficult than getting security clearance; they ask for 100 documents—screenshots of bank statements, tax returns, employment letters, guarantors, references—and we hand it all over and get zero information in return. 

At openigloo, we’ve been giving renters details of their building’s history with bedbugs, violations, litigation and other areas. Since launching last summer, we have over 110,000 users in NYC, and Lidor will be a huge part of our growth in New York and expansion to other markets. 

And how did you get involved, Lidor?

Lidor: Allia was one of the leading participants on the first trek I led. We had met before through a class, but the trek was where we fell in love, so to speak! Fast forward to last August, when I was still at Deloitte, Allia approached me to share some feedback on openigloo. I thought it was really cool, and we kept up a friendly conversation over the next few months. When I was thinking about my next step after Deloitte, I suggested that Allia consider opening a second location in Tel Aviv, since the dynamics of the rental market here are very similar to New York. I did some research, but in the end she decided that Tel Aviv was too small to be the next market. Then she asked if I wanted to be the CMO. I told her I’d sleep on it for a few days, but then I said yes, and here we are. 

What did you learn from itrek that’s helping you build this startup?

Allia: Our business is about connecting with millions of New Yorkers with different lived experiences and finding creative ways to empathize and understand their stories. I think there are a lot of parallels to what I learned in Israel. One of the biggest takeaways for me was how many perspectives and voices there are, and not just among Arabs and Israelis. (It seemed like there were 400 different perspectives even among Israelis.) I’m thinking about that as we build openigloo: that not everything is black and white.

Lidor: Because SIPA is the most diverse policy school when it comes to students’ nationalities, I was exposed to so many different perspectives about the Middle East and learned to be more open-minded in the course of leading my treks. Now at openigloo, one of the things I love is how diverse we are as a team. There’s Allia and me, and we also have people from Pakistan, India, Taiwan and China—so basically all the conflicts in the world are represented at one company, but we work incredibly well together. I first learned how powerful differences can be through itrek when we convinced a very diverse group of people to talk openly. This is something Allia and our CTO Srujan Routhu, are trying to integrate into our company now, since we think that diversity leads to open-mindedness and creativity. I think it’s key for innovation at any company.

Allia: Totally agree. Snapping my fingers to all of that, Lidor.