Meet the Masa Changemakers

Gideon Keyson was the youngest fellow on his Masa program. He came from Amsterdam to a Masa Career program designed for people who wanted to learn programming, despite having little to no prior knowledge.

This decision completely changed the course of his life.

Gideon co-founded and now serves as the CPO of Riverside – a platform for podcast recordings, webinars, and more. Today, it employs 250 people globally, and among its hundreds of thousands of clients, you’ll find Hillary Clinton’s podcast, along with some of the most well-known podcasts in Israel and worldwide.

Nearly everyone who records from home uses the platform.

'Masa helped me come to Israel with very few barriers and focus on what I love to do,' he said. 'I was doing something meaningful every day, focused on personal development and the people around me.'

After his program ended, Gideon enlisted in the Israeli Navy and served in the Dabur unit. Following his discharge, he began studying biomedical engineering at Ben-Gurion University.

Coding had been a semi-professional hobby that he first explored during his Masa program. In his first year of university, he launched Riverside together with his brother.

The start-up quickly grew...