Globetrotter Adi Leviatan recently returned to her native Tel Aviv after ten years in St. Paul.
Now she’s making corporate news by being named CEO of Enlight, Israel’s largest renewable energy company and one with international reach, traded on Nasdaq with a market capitalization of $3 billion.
This makes Leviatan the sole woman to lead a Tel Aviv 35 Index company, Israel’s flagship blue-chip index, comparable to the US S&P 500.
Leviatan moved to Minnesota to support her husband’s professional aspirations at the Mayo Clinic – Dr. Eli Muchtar is a hematologist – and her own career grew, along with their three children. She balanced parenting and being a partner at McKinsey & Company, a multinational consulting firm she first joined in Beijing and continued with in Tel Aviv, then Minneapolis.
For her last six years in Minnesota, Leviatan was a corporate leader at 3M Company, most recently as president of a division bringing in over $1.5 billion a year.
Leviatan also made a lasting personal mark on the Twin Cities.
“Adi and her family have been incredible additions to our community, bringing some much needed Sabra energy!” said Rabbi Rachel Rubenstein of Temple of Aaron. “In addition to who they are as people – warm, inclusive, brilliant, caring individuals – they have also brought for our community a deep connection with Israel, a value that is so central to who we are as a community. We will miss them immensely, but more than anything we are so happy for them to be able to return home, and we can’t wait to visit them there!”
Local friends already miss Leviatan but are celebrating her success and return home.
“She has an incisive mind and commanding bearing,” said Dr. Ellen Thompson. “In that sense, I was not surprised to learn she is a business dynamo. But she also is generous, loyal, tenderly empathetic. And I do not doubt she has the bravery to bring that with her wherever she goes. The Twin Cities was lucky to have Adi for as long as we did. Her heart has always been in Israel. And if she can thrive so far from home for so long, I look forward to what she can build with her roots firmly planted back in her native soil.”
Bringing her trademark dynamism and commitment, Leviatan served on the Board of the St. Paul Jewish Federation and as Board President for Talmud Torah of St. Paul.
“I found the Jewish Community in Minnesota – and St. Paul or the east metro specifically – to be ‘just the right size,’” Leviatan said. “Small enough so everyone knows each other (or at least that’s how it seemed) and was very welcoming. I think if we would have moved to New Jersey or Miami where the Jewish community is huge, we wouldn’t have been able to integrate as well in the community as we did here.”
She developed many other close ties and friendships beyond work and the Jewish world, including in the Chinese community. Earlier in her career and following her degree in economics and East Asian studies from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, she lived in Beijing for years, and speaks Mandarin.
Just as Leviatan positively impacted the Twin Cities, living here has been formative for her entire family, and they plan to keep up various traditions from their life in America.
“I hope that while my kids learn to be Israeli they retain the kindness and respect for all people that they learned in the heartland of the US,” she said. “We all have made many meaningful friendships in Minnesota and I hope we can keep them alive. We already plan to come back next summer so the kids can see their friends and go to Jewish summer camp.”
Returning to Israel during wartime isn’t a lightly made decision, and it’s one Leviatan and her family knew was right.
“We always planned to repatriate to Israel, but the events of October 7, 2023, heightened for both myself and my husband the need to be with our people. As Mijal Bitton, the sociologist, wrote in the Sapir Journal: ‘that pain you feel is peoplehood.’ We gained a lot from our ten years in the U.S. We have advanced our careers, our kids have grown up, we made great friendships. But we belong in Israel.”
Even so, moving back to the Middle East from the Midwest brings a period of adjustment.
“Israelis have always been a little ‘rough around the edges’ and as an Israeli myself I fit in without issue,” Leviatan said. “Now as a Minnesotan, it bothers me. But you have to give people grace. Israelis have been through a lot and are living under existential threats. Everyone is on edge and it shows.”
Now living in a city with sandy beaches and views of the turquoise waters of the Mediterranean, will Leviatan and her family miss Minnesota winters?
“No comment.”
