Our History

Secretary in Israel was founded as an answer to a question that Kirk Hylan, CEO of InSite Networks, Inc., asked of Sarah Leah Gootnick.

In May 2007, Kirk called Sarah Leah and asked her how he could find an assistant who was smart and motivated. (The assistant he had just hired locally in the San Francisco Bay Area quit on him after only 1 day on the job.)

Sarah Leah introduced him to Margelit, who had recently moved to Israel from the US. In the US, Margelit, who is a college-graduate, was a top-level executive recruiter.

Kirk and Margelit started working together right away. Kirk was thrilled to finally have, as he has emailed to us numerous times, "the assistant he had always wanted" (but had never been able to find locally in the San Francisco Bay Area).

After the success of their working relationship, Sarah Leah founded Secretary in Israel in January 2008 to provide this service to other clients in the United States.

Our Founder

Sarah Leah Gootnick is a graduate of Columbia University. She loves helping businesses run more efficiently and she has helped a number of small businesses in the past 10 years do just that.

Sarah Leah's previous work experience includes doing marketing for MRM Partners (a division of McCann Worldgroup) in San Francisco. Prior to that, Sarah Leah founded a nonprofit organization, the Empona Foundation, which helped over 1,000 low-income women get free mammograms and other breast cancer screening exams. The Empona Foundation won the Isabelle Allende 2003 Espiritu Award for the Peace and Protection of Women and was featured in a number of media outlets. Prior to Empona, Sarah Leah ran a medical practice where she helped to double income within months of starting there.

Sarah Leah is originally from the San Francisco Bay Area and currently resides in Jerusalem, Israel.

Would You Like to Learn More?

To learn more about the benefits that our clients are receiving, please visit our client testimonials page.