About

In 1984, at the age of 25, while studying for his BA in Management & Economics at the Tel Aviv University, alongside his Marketing Professor and a fellow student, Oren founded  a management consultancy group: POC – Pekelman, Oren, Cohen. Oren also has an MBA from the Tel Aviv University.

Throughout the years Booky has been active in a variety of managerial roles in different industries. In the beginning of the millennium Oren turned from the high-tech industry to the water industry.  He served as Corporate Business Development Vice President of Netafim, the world’s largest drip and micro-irrigation Company. When he joined Netafim, the annual revenue was $220M currently it is more than $1B.

In 2003, Oren became the Executive Chairman of Mekorot – Israel’s National Water Company. Booky initiated and implemented a new business approach in Mekorot and established WaTech® – Technologies Accelerator, using the company’s 3,000 facilities as beta sites for new external innovation in order to improve Mekorot’s mode of operation. Since 2004, over 1,000 technological solutions were submitted to WaTech® and at least 45 were implemented following a thorough engineering evaluation.

In 2006, Booky was among the initiators of the Israeli Government’s decision to give national priority to the water industry – Israel NewTech. The water technology industry export increased from US$750M in 2006 to US$2.5B in 2018 and still growing.

As part of the national program, Oren began his role as Chairman of WATEC Israel (2007, 2009 and 2011) and led the creation of a prominent global water event. In 2011 there were more than ten thousand participants from over 100 countries. To date, Booky is continuously active in these bi-annual events.

At the end of 2006, Oren was a co-founder of Miya together with the Arison Group. Miya became a world leading company in the field of urban water loss, water systems optimization and efficiency. As the President and CEO and later as the Executive Chairman of the company, Booky defined the company’s strategy and implemented it, by creating a multi-national company active in 5 continents. Oren vested his interest in Miya and established Booky Oren Global Water Technologies. Miya continued to expand its activities and according to the press, was acquired in 2018 for $260M.

In 2011, in order to scale up over 30 years of leading and actively supporting multiple innovation implementation processes, Oren established “Booky Oren Global Water Technologies”. The company is active in hundreds of ventures globally, while overcoming the challenge of “i2i” – innovation To implementation. The uniqueness of its activities is the combination of accumulated experience and expertise with public utilities, technology providers and large vendors, along with global connection coverage, and a business oriented approach. This creates the ability to provide relevant long-term support to its partners, with a meaningful and measurable added value.

In the last few years, Booky is leading various activities at different global events, aimed at shifting the market focus from the technologies towards the “Voice of the Utilities”, highlighting their needs and challenges.

In 2017 Booky was re-elected by Water & Wastewater International (WWi) Magazine ® for the second time (2016, 2017), among the top 25 water leaders in the world out of which only eight leaders were ranked in the consecutive year.

In its April 2019 “Water Technology Power list”, the Global Water Intelligence (GWI) magazine aimed to identify the people who matter to those trying to introduce a new technology to the market.  Divided into four different categories, Booky was chosen #2 in the influencers (pundits and academics) list.

Oren had the honor of working on water issues with the late Mr. Shimon Peres, Israel’s President and Prime Minister and the Peace Nobel Prize winner. Booky tries to live by implementing Peres’s theme:

“I will become old the day my achievement will be higher than my dreams”.