There are people who build programs, and there are people who build movements. Increasingly, those close to the Givati Brigade Association believe Jessica Zandani is doing the latter. As a Major Director of the Academy at the newly launched Givati Drone Center, Zandani is emerging as the driving force behind an initiative that could put Israel in a new kind of spotlight, one defined not just by military strength, but by the speed and originality of its innovation.
“What Jessica has built is unlike anything I’ve seen in this space,” said Itzhak Levit, Chairman of the Givati Brigade Association, who backed Zandani’s vision from the start. “She didn’t just design a training program. She designed a way of thinking, and that is a much harder thing to build.”
Zandani’s model reimagines what military drone training can be, merging live battlefield data, hands-on engineering, and rapid hardware development through 3D printing into a single, continuous learning system. Rather than treating training, maintenance, and innovation as separate tracks, Zandani built them to feed directly into one another.
A Different Kind of Leader
“I never wanted to build something that just teaches people how to operate a drone,” Zandani said. “I wanted to build something that teaches people how to think, how to solve problems the moment they appear, and how to build the next solution before anyone even asks for it.”
That philosophy is quickly becoming the identity of the Givati Drone Center itself. Where other programs rely on fixed curricula, Zandani’s approach evolves constantly, shaped by real feedback from the field and refined in real time by the very soldiers going through it.
“It doesn’t just teach about today, it reminds soldiers of yesterday and of the years before, so that we never make the same mistakes again,” Zandani said. “It gives the promise of ‘never again’ and means it. That’s not something you can put in a textbook. That’s something you have to build into the culture of the place.”
Backed by Experience, Driven by Vision
Levit, whose leadership of the Association gives the initiative its institutional foundation, has been vocal about the role Zandani’s vision plays in the Center’s rise. “I’ve spent years thinking about how to protect our soldiers and honor our legacy,” Levit said. “Jessica is thinking about how to do both of those things and build the future at the same time. That combination is rare, and it’s exactly what this moment calls for.”
Levit believes Zandani’s approach could become a defining example of Israeli innovation for a global audience. “People are going to look at what she’s built here and ask how it happened so fast, and the answer is going to be simple: because she refused to accept the old way of doing things.”
Zandani, for her part, remains focused on what comes next rather than the attention building around her. “This was never about being the center of a story,” she said. “It’s about making sure every soldier who walks through this program leaves better prepared than the one before them. If that happens to put a spotlight on what Israel is capable of, then I’m glad, but the real win is what it does for the people in the field.”
A Legacy in Motion
The Givati Drone Center operates under the Givati Brigade Association, founded in 1985 by Givati veterans of Israel’s 1948 War of Independence under Major General Itzhak Pundak z"l. What began as a mission to honor fallen soldiers and preserve Givati’s legacy is now, through Jessica Zandani’s vision and Itzhak Levit’s support, opening a new chapter, one that could bring a fresh kind of global attention to what Israeli innovation looks like today.