Life On The Pledge: Gal Podjarny

About Gal

Gal Podjarny is a writer and blogger who was born and raised in Israel/Palestine and made homes in Canada, and the UK. She draws from these diverse cultural landscapes to examine how social forces shape personal narratives and relationships. Her writing, including the short story collection Human Fragments and contributions to various anthologies, captures these intersections of identity and community.

Recently, Gal published her first novel, Until the Walls Come Down It’s a story about a Jewish Israeli woman who discovers that her childhood home in Jaffa used to belong to her Palestinian husband’s family. It is based loosely on her family’s history and draws from her work with the Disrupt Foundation, a family foundation aimed at disrupting unjust systems, leveraging strategic long-term processes of change, and pursuing social justice.

Gal and her partner Guy Podjarny became Founders Pledge members in 2020. In this article, Gal shares more about their philanthropic journey and her own life experiences - the series we call ‘Living Life on the Pledge’.

Tell us a bit about yourself:

I’m a bit of an eternal student, and following my interests led me to write fiction, do a PhD in psychology, and start a family foundation, among other things. Throughout my life, I have always looked for ways to give back to the community I’m embedded in. As I emigrated from my homeland in Israel/Palestine—first to Canada and then to the UK—my concept of community expanded, but I never stopped looking for ways to contribute to societal conversation.

Tell us more about your giving journey - what drew you to the Founders Pledge?

My spouse, Guy Podjarny, is a tech founder of Snyk and Tessl. So, he introduced the concept to our family, and we became members in 2020. We both share a core value of giving back to our communities, especially when we are successful, and we saw a unique opportunity in Founders Pledge to support an organisation that promotes this idea. Moreover, we love the possibility of harnessing tech founders’ creativity and disruptive thinking for a broader good.

How has your experience with Founders Pledge been so far?

When we joined Founders Pledge, we were at the beginning of our philanthropy journey. Founders Pledge has given us a solid base to learn and understand what aligns with our values and how we want to use our resources. Moreover, they have given us the support to create our family foundation, which was the solution that suited our specific needs and values.

How has your Founders Pledge experience changed the way you think about impact?

Working with Founders Pledge was invaluable in helping us think more systematically about our approach. They asked us questions we hadn't even realised we needed to answer—questions about our theory of change, measurement frameworks, and what kind of involvement we actually wanted in our charitable work. That process helped us crystallise that we wanted very hands-on, direct project involvement, which ultimately led us to establish our own foundation where we could pursue that approach more fully.

What charitable organization(s) do you currently support and why?

In 2024, Disrupt had supported over a hundred organisations in various capacities. In addition, we undertake a few larger projects that we run in-house. For instance, we're building—along with several of our partners—a digital referral system to help small organisations coordinate services more effectively. This would solve a data coordination problem that currently prevents people in the UK from accessing available resources.

What’s one question you would like to ask a giving expert?

I'd like to explore the institutional incentives that drive fragmentation in the charitable sector. Even as someone who ultimately decided to start our own foundation—after carefully evaluating existing options—I'm struck by how the system seems to reward starting something new over the much harder work of collaboration. I'd be curious whether an expert sees structural ways to better balance innovation with cooperation.

How do your work and philanthropic projects complement each other — or challenge it?

My work as a writer is inspired by everything I learn from the amazing activists I meet through Disrupt. That’s why it was important for me to shine a spotlight on grassroots activism in Until the Walls Come Down. On the other hand, the research I do for my books provides me with a broader picture of the topics we work on at the foundation and offers new ideas and directions. This reciprocity always builds on the tension between the personal and the universal and between conflicting ideas that are two sides of the same coin.

Please share with us about your current projects/initiatives:

My main focus right now is my debut novel, Until the Walls Come Down. The book has received some great initial responses, but the work of getting it out to as many hands as I can has only just begun. I also invest time in charitable work through Disrupt, our family foundation, where we work on various issues in the UK as well as in Israel/Palestine. I’m starting to work on a project, through Disrupt, that would bring together artists, activists, and experts to imagine alternative futures.