By Eden
In Ukraine, taking babies for a walk before they are two weeks old is considered unlucky.
On April 11, 1986, Ludmilla Braverman gave birth to Inna and waited until April 26 to take her daughter for her first walk in Cherkassy, some 200 kilometers from Chernobyl.
That same day, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant had the worst accident in history, releasing 400 times more radiation than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
“My mother always said that the power plant got so excited when she saw me the first time it exploded,” Braverman said with a laugh during a chat with ISRAEL21c en Español in her 21st-floor office overlooking Tel Aviv.
Although Inna Braverman told the story with humor, at that moment the then girl suffered a respiratory arrest and was declared clinically dead. Her mother, a trained nurse, gave her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to save her.
“I was given a second chance at life and I always felt like I had to do something important,” Braverman said.
And so she did. As CEO of Eco Wave Power, a renewable energy company with a technology to generate clean energy from ocean waves, she received numerous accolades, including the United Nations Climate Action Award and the Seal of Excellence from the Commission European.
The power of the waves
The fact that she almost fell victim to nuclear power made Braverman always feel responsible for finding alternative energy sources.
Growing up in the coastal city of Acre (Akko) in Israel’s Western Galilee, Ella Braverman spent a lot of time at sea and became fascinated by the waves.
At the University of Haifa she studied political science and English literature – she planned to go into politics – and after graduating she did translations for a renewable energy company but she still thought about wave power.
On her 23rd birthday, she met Canadian businessman David Leb at a pool party. “He asked me: ‘What is your passion?’ and I said: ‘The energy of the waves’, and he said: ‘Mine too!’ It was a magical match made in business heaven,” she revealed.
Together they joined forces and began studying companies that had tried to harness the power of the waves and convert it into renewable energy. “We appreciate their efforts because they taught us a lot. We would not have been able to develop our technology without them,” she said.
The main problems for offshore wave energy companies were that the technology was expensive and fragile; no one would insure the facility, and environmentalists would object over issues related to construction in the ocean.
“In the past, people interested in wave technology were looking for bigger waves offshore, but every time you want to install or repair the system, you have to get in the water and it’s very expensive. There was the case of Pelamis, the famous bug in Scotland. There was talk that they were the future of wave energy and they invested $150 million and the system broke after three days,” she recounted Braverman.
Solution with floats
After much experimentation, Braverman and Leb devised a pioneering technology using floats attached to existing structures on land, adding nothing to the water.
“We started with slower and smaller waves. The floats move up and down with the waves, creating pressure that is then transmitted into clean electricity,” he explained.
The first Eco Wave power station was installed in Gibraltar in May 2016. It is technically the only wave power power station in the world.
“We built it with $450,000. Nobody believed that it would work and be so profitable. Today it supplies electricity for 15 per cent of electricity consumption in Gibraltar”, he added.
How did he think he could do it? “When you’re 24 years old, you think you can do anything. As we get older we get disappointed and bad experiences make us lose confidence. But all the influential entrepreneurs say that no matter how many times you fall down, you always have to get up. Innocence helps you,” she remarked.
The company was listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange on July 18, 2019 and on Nasdaq USA in July 2021.
“We liked that date because the number 18 means life in Hebrew,” she explained.
“For the US stock market we couldn’t use the letters ECOWAV because it was too long. I told my lawyers that my real dream is to have WAVE as our symbol. My lawyers told me that I would never receive those credentials. That night we got a call that WAVE was available. It was very nice,” she narrated.
Only Israeli company on the Swedish stock exchange
Braverman speaks Russian, English, and Hebrew fluently, and at breakneck speed. He recently discovered that his lungs are not fully developed, a condition that could be related to the Chernobyl disaster.
“I have to speak fast because I want to make sure I get everything said before I have to take a breath,” Braverman explained.
It was a gloomy morning when we met and although she apologized for not feeling well, she seemed upbeat and excited by the energy of the waves.
Inna Braverman has a magnetic presence, both on and off screen.
How does it feel to be the CEO of a 20-person multi-billion dollar tech company without any engineering background?
“I don’t think I’m luckier than anyone else but I don’t give up on opportunities,” she said. And she described how the company was listed on the Swedish stock exchange.
The Founders Forum, a global network of technology leaders, invited her to an event in Tel Aviv. She had had a bad day and she didn’t feel like going, but Leb urged her not to miss out.
“I was standing there not talking to anyone, not getting involved. Then a young man came to talk to me. He couldn’t tell her ‘I’m in a bad mood and I don’t want to talk’. So we started chatting and it turned out that he was the vice president of the Swedish stock exchange. He invited me to list the company. He wasn’t even on our agenda. But 54 percent of Sweden’s energy is renewable. So, within six months, we were on the Swedish stock market. We are the first, and so far the only, Israeli company on that stock market,” she said proudly.
Altruistic instincts
In January, Eco Wave installed floats on the breakwater of the port of Yafo. The project will start soon with the provision of 100 kilowatts of electrical power for 100 houses.
Braverman said that Israel’s Ministry of Energy, which recognized Eco Wave Power as a “pioneer,” partnered on the project with EDF Renewables IL, a subsidiary of France’s National Electricity Company.
Once the work is complete, it will be the first time wave power has been connected to Israel’s national power grid. Eventually, the plan is to power 325,000 homes in the Tel Aviv-Yafo area.
Braverman acknowledged that in the last eleven years he has learned a lot: “I really trust my instincts. In the past, I’d see something I knew was wrong and tell the engineers, but they wouldn’t pay attention to me. Today I understood that I must trust my own instincts. Experience is not always a guarantee.
Still, it’s hard for her to be a woman in a man’s world. Only five percent of all managerial positions in the technology field are held by women.
“I go to conventions and I’m the only woman. No matter how much you believe in yourself, you are not taken seriously for being a woman. In one of my first meetings, when I was presenting information about the company, a man asked me, ‘Can I have an espresso?’ He assumed I was a secretary,” Braverman said.
Today, the businesswoman says that she is passionate about encouraging other women. “We take a lot of interns and I have a bit of a preference for women. I was at a conference organized by Alliance Global Partners with Israeli women who manage and invest in local companies, trading both in Israel and abroad. There were 16 of us. It was the first time I sat in a room with women. I felt so comfortable… We all left fascinated, ”she recounted.
At the facility in the port of Yafo, a German television crew spent at least ten minutes filming her as she walked up the industrial steps in high heels.
Braverman also credits her mother.
Her family left Ukraine four years after the Chernobyl explosion, partly because of the health problems of Inna and her older sister Nina, as well as anti-Semitism.
The family had a comfortable position but had to sell all their assets to the government. Thus, they arrived in Israel with 300 dollars per person.
“What can be done with that money?” she asked rhetorically.
“My father, who was the CEO of a company in Ukraine, started working in a factory there. My mother, who was not only a nurse but also had a second degree in economics, cleaned houses. Once when I was very little and I was drawing on the wall, my father came in very angry and my mother said to him: ‘What are you doing? You’re breaking his spirit. It’s a work of art! ‘No matter what crazy idea I had, she really believed in me,” she revealed.
Braverman said moving to Israel was good for her and her sister: “My parents paid for it. Now, we can look back and see how difficult it was. They took risks for us.”
The poker-loving board said she appreciates all of her parents’ sacrifices. “My mother now says that she was worth it. She always tells me that she puts all her bets on me,” she expressed.